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COMMEMORATIVE EXERCISES 

OF THE 

First Church of Christ 



IN HARTFORD 

II 



One Hundredth Anniversary 

OF THE 

Dedication of the Meeting-House 

AND THE 

Two Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

OF THE 

Founding of the Church 
December i-j, ^9^7 




HARTFORD. CONN. 

PUBLISHED BY THE CHURCH 

1908 



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n. OF n. 

lAM 23 <909 



ORDER OF EXERCISES 

Sunday Morning 

Memorial Communion Service 

The Scripture, Psalm xlviii. John xxi. 
The Sermon, The Minister 

Text, John xx: 21. Subject, The Mission of the 
Church 
The Music 

Prelude, Adagio from 5th Sonata Giiilmant 
Anthem, Ho ! every one that thirsteth Wilson 
Offertory, Thou O Lord art my Protector 

St. Saens 
Hymns, 126, O God, our help In ages past 

670, O God of Bethel, by whose hand 
770, Blest be the tie that binds 
PosTLUDE, Religious March from 6th Sonata 

Rheinherger 

Sunday Afternoon 

Festival Vesper Service 

The Sermon, The Memories of the Meeting-House 
The Music 

Prelude, Adagio from 2d Sonata Buck 

Anthem, Cantate Domino In B flat Buck 

Anthem, I saw the Lord Stainer 

Anthem, The Blessed Host (Male Quintette) 

Grieg 
Evening Hymn, Holiest, breathe an evening 

blessing Martin 

PosTLUDE, Grand Chorus In E flat Guilmant 



first church of christ of hartford. 

Monday Afternoon 

Recital on the Memorial Organ 

by 

John Spencer Camp, Organist and Director 

OF Music 

3.30 p. M. 



PROGRAM 

1. Sonata No. i, in D minor, op. 42 

a. Largo e Maestoso 
h. Allegro 

c. Pastorale 

d. Finale 

2. Wedding Song 

3. a. St. Ann's fugue 

h. Aria (arr. by A. W. Gottschalk) 
c. Bourree in B minor (arr. by Best) 

4. Largo from " New World Symphony " 

(arr. by J. S. C.) 

5. a. Pastorale 

h. March Mignonne 

6. Ave Maria and " Addio " 

7. Grand Oftertoire, St. Cecilia No. 2 

5-7 P. M. 
Reception in the Chapel 



Guilmant 



Camp 

1 

\ Bach 

J 
Dvorak 

Hitz 
Poldini 

Nevin 
Batiste 



Anniversary Day 

Tuesday Afternoon 

Historical and Congratulatory Addresses 
Organ Prelude 

Hymn 693. I love Thy Kingdom, Lord 
Historical Addresses 

The Building of the Fourth Meeting-House 

Mr. Francis Parsons 
A Hundred Years Ago 

Prof. Williston Walker, D.D. 



anniversary exercises. 5 

Congratulatory Addresses 

For the Sisterhood of Congregational Churches 

Rev. Edwin P. Parker, D.D. 
For the Fellowship of the Churches of Connecticut 

The Rt. Rev. Chauncey B. Brewster, D.D. 
Hymn 695. O, where are kings and empires now 
Organ Postlude 

Tuesday Evening. 
Commemoration Service 

Organ Prelude, Andante from ist Sonata Buck 
Invocation, The Minister 
Scripture Reading 

Rev. George L. Clark, Wethersfield 
Prayer, Rev. Roscoe Nelson, Windsor 
Hymn, 902, O God, beneath Thy guiding Hand 
Congratulatory Addresses 
For the State 

Hon. Rollin S. Woodruff, Governor 
of Connecticut 
For the City 

Hon. William F. Henney, LL.D. 
Mayor of Hartford 
Anthem, Festival Te Deum in E flat Buck 

Address 

The Church and the City 

Rev. Artemas J. Haynes, D.D., New Haven 
Hymn, 897, America 
Benediction, The Minister 
Organ Postlude, Festal March Calkin 



FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 



Sunday 



Memorial Communion 
Service 

At the Memorial Communion Service, before the 
sermon the Minister said: It is the privilege of the 
church on this festival day to accept gifts made in 
memory of those who founded the Church, two hundred 
and seventy-five years ago. Ten chairs for the use of 
the Church in the communion service are presented in 
memory of ten founders of the Church. They bear the 
following inscriptions : 

"In memory of Rev. Thomas Hooker, 1 586-1647. 

A Founder and the first Minister of this Church. 

Given by a lineal descendant, Edward Beecher Hooker, 

1907." 

"In memory of Rev. Samuel Stone, 1602-1663. 
A Founder, the first Teacher, and second Minister of this 

Church. 

Given by two collateral descendants, The Misses Harriet 

and Laura Johnson, 1907." 

"In memory of Governor John Haynes, 1594-1654. 

A Founder of this Church. 

Given by a lineal descendant, Miss Mabel Harlakenden 

Perkins, 1907." 

" In memory of Governor Edward Hopkins, 1600-1657. 

A Founder of this Church. 

Given by Charles T. Wells, 1907." 

"In memory of Governor George Wyllys, 1590-1644. 

A Founder of this Church. 

Given by four of his lineal descendants. The Misses 

Katherine Seymour Day and Alice Hooker Day, 

Mrs. Caroline Day Bissell Garmany, 

Henry A. Perkins, 1907." 

"In memory of Governor Thomas Welles, 1598-1660. 

A Founder of this Church. 

Given by a lineal descendant, Edward Williams Hooker, 

1907." 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 7 

"In memory of Governor John Webster, 1590-1661. 

A Founder of this Church. 

Given by two lineal descendants, John Marshall Holcombe 

and Mrs. Emily S. Goodwin Holcombe, 1907." 

"In memory of Elder William Goodwin, 1673. 

A Founder of this Church. 

Given by a lineal descendant, Mrs. Julia Loomis 

Havemeyer, 1907." 

"In memory of Hon. William Whiting, 1647. 

A Founder of this Church. 
Given by three lineal descendants, Mrs. Mary Brace 
Collins, Miss Emily M. Brace, Mrs. Lucy Brace 
Allen, 1907." 

"In memory of Hon. John Talcott, 1688. 

A Founder of this Church. 

Given by a lineal descendant, George Goodwin Williams, 

1907." 

It is meet that I should add that these gifts have 
been presented through and made under the direction 
of Mrs. Emily Seymour Goodwin Holcombe. The 
church has thus another testimony of her loyal and lov- 
ing zeal in this which her hands have wrought. 

Long may these chairs remain in our ancient meet- 
ing-house, cherished by this Church, worthy memorials 
of worthy men. 

The sermon was preached by the Minister from the 
text, John 20:21, "As the Father hath sent me even 
so send I you;" upon the subject "The Mission of the 
Church"; 

The Christian Church was born out of the experi- 
ence of the first Christian disciples after the death and 
the resurrection of Jesus. Its elements were gathered 
during the ministry of Jesus. Men heard Him speak 
and followed Him, becoming obedient to His Com- 
mandments, being inspired by His spirit and growing 
loyal to His person; but during His intimate, personal 
relationship with them their fellowship with each other 
did not come to self-consciousness. They were in fel- 
lowship with each other, but they did not know it. 



8 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

Their fellowship with Him excluded the sense of every 
other relation. 

Now when Jesus's death removed Him from this 
intimate and personal relationship, and when the resur- 
rection experiences restored their relationship to Him 
under changed conditions, there was born their sense 
of fellowship with each other. They found each other 
as brethren. They realized a relationship of which 
before they had been unconscious. They declared this 
relationship and made known its purpose and its source 
in the will and purpose of Jesus. When thus they 
became related to each ofher consciously the Church 
began to be. Therefore it is that in these resurrection 
experiences of the disciples the Church has found her 
charter. It was in such an experience that the great 
command was given, "Go ye into all the world and 
preach the gospel to every creature." In obedience to 
this commandment the Church has girdled the world, 
and in an unbroken continuity more deeply real than 
can be symbolized by any merely official succession, has 
propagated herself in every land and spoken her mes- 
sage to every age. In that great command the Church 
received her message, was entrusted with the word she 
has to speak. 

I beg to suggest that in this other resurrection 
experience of the Church she received her mission, — 
that is, there was entrusted to her the work she has to 
do, the kind of life she has to live, the ideal toward 
which she must strive. "As the Father hath sent me, 
even so send I you." I would not point out a divisive 
contrast between the message of the Church and the 
mission of the Church, between what she has to say and 
what she has to do, between what she must preach 
and what she must be. 

The two are essentially one. They have not and 
never can be separated really, or even apparently for 
long, the one from the other. If the Church has 
seemed to emphasize her message to the neglect of her 
mission in any age, it has only been because, in order 
that the mission may be achieved the message must be 
declared, and it is soon discovered that the message 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 9 

itself is not fully declared until the mission be wholly 
achieved. So it is that the missionary who has jour- 
neyed half around the world to declare a message finds 
that he has not accomplished his purpose so long as he 
has made use only of the spoken word and the printed 
page. Forthwith he begins to achieve the mission. He 
builds hospitals for the sick, schools for little children, 
asylums for the blind. He furnishes new industries for 
idle hands, and leads patiently into a new social order 
the slowly developing life as it responds to the word 
of his message. 

On this high and solemn anniversary day I bring 
to you from the charter of the Church Jesus's own state- 
ment of its mission, and would urge upon you some 
large appreciation of the meaning of this word for the 
twentieth-century Church in the midst of modem life. 
The principle of this word is this, the mission of the 
Church is identical with the mission of Jesus. The 
mission of Jesus the world has recognized and learned; 
it is to redeem and to renew the life of humanity. 
Nothing less than this can be the mission of the Church. 
She must set herself to the task of the redemption and 
the renewal of the race. 

The Church will learn how to fulfill her mission by 
taking the suggestion of this principle and learning 
how Jesus Himself fulfilled His mission, and here at 
once she finds that her message is included in her 
mission. Jesus sought to redeem the world and renew 
the life of humanity by bringing to men a new teach- 
ing concerning God and concerning man. He inter- 
preted anew the mystery of the heart of the universe, 
unveiled the hidden shrine of the world's great altar 
and let the light of an eternal love shine forth from 
that shrine in the word "Our Father." Through all 
these teachings of Jesus shines this illumination. Forth 
from all of them beams this radiance. God is our 
Father, we are His children. To make men know this 
was Jesus's first mission. It is the first mission of His 
Church. It cannot be compassed by mere declaration 
or preaching, though the voice of the preacher must 
ever be foremost among the pedagogical methods of the 



lO FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

church. Patient and continuous teaching on the part of 
the whole Church body by word and deed and very life 
can alone fulfill the educational mission of the Church. 
Nothing else can take the place of this. Everything 
else falls except as it issues In this. The first task of 
the Church, as it was the first task of Jesus, is to make 
men know God, truly and adequately. 

The second task of the Church will be learned from 
the second element of the mission of Jesus as fulfilled 
by Him. He served in love. When He is not teach- 
ing I find Him working, and His labor is always a labor 
of love in the service of the sick, the poor, and the 
weak. So did He fulfill His mission of redemption and 
renewal. Wherever disease had worked its ruin and 
sin had left Its corruption, wherever the Injustice of 
man had wrought Its iniquities in human conditions 
with their resulting limitations and confinements of the 
free spirits of men, — there the gracious hand of our 
Lord was revealed and the arm of His power made 
bare to touch with blessing and to lift with power into 
newness of life and freedom of spirit. The significant 
fact about the miracles of Jesus Is not the question of 
their supernaturalness, but is the spirit in which they 
were wrought, the purpose which they served, the goal 
toward which they manifestly reached. They were, in- 
deed, revelations of divine power, made not so much 
that we might know that there is a divine power — for 
the world's great doubt has not been here — but that 
we might know to what ends the divine power moves, 
whither in our outspread human life the divine power 
bends in pity, what in the far horizons of God's supreme 
purpose is the ultimate goal toward which that divine 
power shall come. This It Is that was revealed In the 
miracles that Jesus wrought; and because nothing less 
than this great and Infinite truth Is revealed in them, my 
mind finds no diflficulty in the acceptance of their his- 
toricity. To make men know and feel this is sufficient 
cause for the bringing into play upon this old world of 
ours, of forces which the ongoing of the ages has not 
demanded, acting under laws which the intelligence of 
the ages has not known. This then is the mission of 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. II 

the Church in its second task; to serve as Jesus served. 
The sick, the poor and the weak are in the charter of 
every Church, related to it as the impotent, the diseased, 
the lame, the halt and blind before the house of Peter's 
wife's mother were related to Jesus in the afterglow 
of that Galilean twilight. Forth from her sanctuaries 
the people of the Church must go in the gentle and 
healing ministries of a vital compassion — bearing her 
gifts to all — a real need being the only condition im- 
perative for her as for her Master, 

The third moment in the mission of Jesus dips into 
the dark deeps of man's life, faces the supreme tragedy 
of the soul's existence and wrests out of that dark- 
ness, shot through with that flame, its symbol, lined in 
fire and blood, the conquering cross. Jesus's mission 
was consummated in Jesus's death. He did most and 
He was most when in the face of the supreme limita- 
tion of life He gave that last and uttermost gift and 
yielded up His spirit into the hands of His God and 
Father. The death of Jesus as a part of His message 
we cannot understand; but as a part of His mission 
we know it. To place it in a theology wherein we 
shall explain what that death did for the forgiveness 
of our sins is to make it mysterious and distant; but 
to read it as part of the fulfillment of His mission to 
the men He loved and the people whom He served in 
love is to make it eloquent with that universal music 
of sacrifice which the ear of man never misinterprets 
and the power of which to melt the hearts of men is 
supreme. Nothing less than this is the mission of the 
Church. When the Church has declared the atonement 
wrought by Jesus as part of her message only, she has 
confused and confounded the minds of men. When 
the Church has interpreted the atonement wrought by 
Jesus as part of her mission, she has won and trans- 
formed the lives of men. Sacrifice as a dogma is a 
stumbling block; sacrifice as a fact is the dynamic of 
life. It is surely true that for every fact there must be 
a teaching, but the moment the teaching becomes sepa- 
rated from the fact which is its subject, it dies and 
remains unassimilated by the mind or heart of man. 



12 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

To preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified is a homi- 
letic achievement which cannot be fulfilled without the 
shedding of blood. We must make men know that in 
that sacrifice of Calvary the heart of God was paying 
the price of suffering for man's sin; we must make 
men know that what the heart of God paid then, the 
heart of God had paid through the ages and does pay 
still in expiation of human transgression. Such a mes- 
sage is too deep and vital to be adequately interpreted 
to the modern mind save by life itself. Only when the 
Church shall have fulfilled her mystic union with her 
Lord, not only in words but in very life so that her 
strength, which is the strength of her people, is poured 
forth to right the wrongs of men, atone for their 
iniquities and heal the wounds and hurts of their souls, 
will the world really know what the atonement is in the 
Christian faith. 

This then is the suflliciently broad and sufficiently 
simple mission of this Church in Hartford. Reverently 
her Lord speaks to her, " As the Father hath sent Me, 
even so send I you." This commission she holds in 
no monopoly, for it is given to all those who bear the 
name of her Master, but none the less sincerely must 
she cherish it as her own. She is to redeem and renew 
the life of the city. By her teaching of the facts and 
the faiths of the Christian people; by her service in 
love, whereby the weak and sick, and the poor are 
touched with blessing; by the sacrificial ministry of her 
people who go forth from her doors to bury their lives 
in the life of the city, that they may find them again 
glorious in the city's redeemed and renewed life: by 
these means shall the Church fulfill her mission. In 
this arduous task she calls for comrades. In this 
broad field of her life she ventures forth as she has ever 
done with a high courage and a deep faith. Like the 
Church of Jerusalem her sufficient confidence is in the 
word of her Lord, " Lo, I am with you always, even 
unto the end of the age." 

At the communion table the Minister stated that on 
the occasion of the dedication of the present meeting- 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. I3 

house there were 188 members of the church. During 
one hundred years 2,085 members had been received 
on confession of faith and 1,623 by letter, making the 
total membership during the century 3,708. The mem- 
bership on December i, 1907, was 878. 

The following messages were read to be sent in the 
name of the church: 

To the Rev. Wolcott Calkins, D.D., Associate Pastor, 
1862-64: 
The First Church of Christ in Hartford met in 
memorial communion service remembers with gratitude 
your early brief ministry here, rejoices in your service 
to the Churches of our Lord and prays for you light 
in the eventide. 

To the Rev. Charles H. Williams, Acting Pastor, i8g2- 

1894: 

The First Church of Christ in Hartford met in 
memorial communion service sends to you affectionate 
and sympathetic greetings. "The Lord bless you and 
keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you 
and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up his counte- 
nance upon you and give you peace." 

The Rev. Prof. Melancthon W. Jacobus, D.D., 
acting pastor, 1 899-1900, assisted the Minister in the 
communion service. 



14 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 



The Festival 
Vesper Service 

At the Festival Vesper Service the Minister offered 
the prayers of thanksgiving and consecration, to which 
the responses were made for the congregation by the 
choir. 

Abnighty God, Thou who inhabitest eternity, whose 
years have no numbering, we Thy servants are creatures 
of a day; swifter than a weaver's shuttle we pass and 
are gone. Yet hast Thou made known Thy truth and 
grace even unto us and granted unto our pathway the 
glorious radiance of the everlasting light. For this Thy 
goodness unto us in our weakness and night, for love 
that never fails, for faith that cannot die, and for the 
sure hope of eternal life: 

Response. We give Thee thanks and praise through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 

God of our fathers, their fortress and their rock, 
their sure defense and high tower of safety, we remem- 
ber with praises of thanksgiving the way in which Thou 
didst lead Thy people of old. As Thou didst bring 
Israel out of Egypt so didst Thou go before our fathers 
to bring them through the wilderness to a large place, 
to a land goodly and pleasant, across the threshold of 
an opportunity wide and high both for the body and 
the soul. For Thy servants, their pastors, and their 
teachers, men mighty in the Scriptures, valiant in spirit, 
in whom was good counsel abounding, for those who 
ministered to the common weal through public service, 
for those who in humble lives wrought through truth 
patiently in love, for the fortitude which endured hard- 
ship with a high courage and kept the faith through night 
and storm, for all those who in spirit of the fathers 
through the generations toiled and suffered, dared and 
bled, looking unto Him in whom their faith was begun 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 1 5 

and shall be finished, even Jesus, Lord of our world and 
immortal life, the light of whose face lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world. 

Response. We render thanks unto Thee, thou 
giver of every good and perfect gift, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 

Inspirer and hearer of prayer, Thou whose own vast 
temple stands built over land and sea, we bless Thee 
that Thou hast filled with Thy glory the house which 
Thy servants builded that Thy name should be pro- 
claimed there. For the hands now long at rest that 
with high sense of beauty, patient loving zeal and 
utmost fidelity, reared these walls and columns about us, 
and laid this roof over us, for the continued care that 
has preserved to us this sanctuary and enriched it with 
gifts for love's sake to Thy glory; for the men of Thine 
own choosing who have here in the power of Thy 
spirit declared Thy faithfulness to the great congrega- 
tion, for those who have here ministered in the service 
of sacred song and given praise unto Thee upon instru- 
ments of music, for those who in this place have borne wit- 
ness to their faith, have found instruction in the things of 
Thy kingdom and have rejoiced in the privilege of 
communion with Thee, — for all those who by the power 
of memory do now minister peace to our souls. 

Response. We bless Thy grace through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 

We do beseech Thee, O God our Father, to preserve 
unto our children and our children's children this house 
of meeting. Let not the wind nor the flood nor the 
fire prevail against it, we pray. Grant, we pray, that 
the message of grace and truth from this place shall 
have ever wider hearing in the streets of the city. Make 
this a place of meeting for many peoples, a house of 
prayer for all nations, we beseech Thee. Endue Thy 
servants who shall speak for Thee in this place with 
Thy spirit that they may speak the truth in power. In- 
spire those who sing Thy praise that they may indeed 
breathe forth thanksgiving and make known the hope 
and faith of Thy people. Shepherd of Israel who 
leadest Thy people as a flock, we pray Thee for the 



1 6 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

church whose earthly tabernacle is here that Thou wilt 
in her accomplish Thy purpose to redeem and bless Thy 
children. Quicken Thou the people unto all good works, 
enlighten them with a true faith, enlarge their hearts 
with holy love. Jehovah of hosts, who leadest the 
people according to Thy will, we pray for this city, that 
in her sisterhood of Christian Churches she may be 
blessed, that in her industrial and commercial activity 
she may be enlarged and strengthened in righteousness, 
that in her civic and industrial life she may cleave to 
all holy and high ideals. Bless, we beseech Thee, and 
guard the mayor of our city, the governor of our State, 
the president of the United States, and all who hold 
authority over us. Preserve our nation in honor and 
in purity that it may be the home of a people whose 
god is the Lord. Bless the whole earth with a knowl- 
edge of this Gospel, and may Thy children everywhere 
herald the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Response. Hear these our prayers and answer all 
our petitions by granting us Thy spirit through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 

The sermon was preached by the Minister from the 
text, Psalms 93:5, "Holiness becometh Thy house O 
Jehovah, for evermore"; upon the subject, "The 
Memories of the Meeting-house" : 

The centennial anniversary of the dedication of a 
meeting-house is not infrequent among our ancient 
Churches of Connecticut. Nearly thirty of our sister 
Churches of Christ in the State have had the privilege, 
earlier than we, to worship God under a roof built for 
one hundred years above them. Of these meeting- 
houses those of Hampton and Southington, built in 
1723 and 1728 respectively, are, so far as known, the 
oldest. Nevertheless there is somewhat in such an 
event which stirs the blood and quickens the memory. 
It is of course absurd to think of a century as though 
it were a living creature with a head and a body and a 
tail. It is, after all, only an arbitrary thing, so much 
cut off from the pattern God is weaving out of our 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 1 7 

days and years for his vesture in eternity. But to our 
human understanding it makes its appeal and we can- 
not refrain from giving to it our homage. 

This text which I have read you is but the first of 
the memories of the meeting-house, for it was from 
this text that good Doctor Strong, one hundred years 
ago on Tuesday, preached the sermon when this house 
was dedicated. The story of its building will be told 
for us by a sympathetic voice, and I pass it by in that 
anticipation. But I cannot forbear to call up to your 
minds the recollection of the scene upon which these 
columns that day looked down: the pulpit, I suppose, 
six feet higher than the platform from which your 
preacher speaks; the galleries with their square box 
pews, at least four feet higher than the line at which 
their inner edge now hangs; the old high-backed 
square pews beneath them, the slips, somewhat like 
our present pews which filled the center of the floor 
of the house. The house was filled, we may believe, 
with the people of the small town who came up to it 
in pride as the result of their long labor of love, and 
as a type of meeting-houses yet to be throughout the 
city, and indeed throughout the State. 

That occasion in the memory of the meeting-house 
must be typical of the succeeding ten years through 
which Nathan Strong filled full his ministry under this 
roof. Echoes of the second war with England came 
through these windows, and doubtless many members of 
the famous Hartford convention bowed in prayers for 
divine guidance on the Lord's day in this presence. 

A sad memory that must be which recalls the death 
and funeral of Nathan Strong, Minister of this Church 
from 1774 through the stirring days of the Revolution, 
at the time of the building of this house and. until 18 16, 
when he died, having served the Church forty-three 
years lacking one month. On the fourth of March, 
18 1 8, the young Joel Hawes, twenty-nine years old, was 
ordained minister in this place, — a memory of the 
meeting-house full of tender and rich meaning for the 
history of this Church. Through forty-four years his 
teachings guided this people and quickened this com- 



I 8 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

munity from his pulpit. He counted it a year lost 
which witnessed in this Church or in the adjoining 
chapel, which from 1830 was used by the Church, no 
revival of religion marked by penitent confessions and 
joyful conversions into the blessedness of the Christian 
experience. The latter days of this ministry were 
shadowed by the great clouds of Civil War which 
threw its gloom over every sanctuary of the land, and 
which wrung from the hearts of the worshiping people 
here, as everywhere, petitions deeper than which none 
have ever been offered in our fair land. Sons of this 
Church went forth for the defense of the nation, and 
from its pulpit the brilliant and impetuous Wolcott 
Calkins sent forth no uncertain sound, calling the life 
of the city to patriotic service and to Christian sacrifice 
in behalf of enslaved humanity. 

There are many among us who remember the 
church as it appeared in June of 1867 when draped in 
black in token of the mourning of this people for the 
death of their minister, who through forty-nine years 
and three months had stood in pastoral relation to 
them. Neither the meeting-house nor the Church that 
worships here can ever forget that doughty champion 
of the faith, that sterling preacher of the Gospel who 
by his sheer sincerity impressed his message upon two 
generations of Hartford men and won from the city 
that worthy epitaph among a commercial people, 
" Honest Joel Hawes." 

The memories of the meeting-house for these latter 
years are for the most part the memories of this people, 
and it is not needful that I, who never knew one of 
them, should seek to bring back to the minds of you 
who knew and loved them all, the figures of that line 
of goodly men who, in too swift succession, stood in 
this place and led this people, George Gould, Elias H. 
Richardson, George Leon Walker, and Charles Marion 
Lamson, all wrought noble ministries here for which 
none has reason to be more grateful than I, who through 
seven years have been enabled to build with inexperi- 
enced hands, because whatever I have done has rested 
upon the sure foundations which they laid. 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 1 9 

If I have not mentioned the men who have sat in 
these pews, have bowed In this presence and here have 
declared their faith In praise, It Is only because the time 
would fall me to tell of their varied virtues and minis- 
tries to the life of the Church, the city, and the State. 
In a deep sense It Is true that these ministers of God 
whom I have named spoke what they did speak and 
were what they were enabled to become, because they 
were representatives of and spokesmen for, the rank 
and file of a membership singularly devoted, sincere and 
efficient In the kingdom of Christ. If these walls could 
but speak, if these columns could but bear witness, what 
testimony would they give to the men and women who 
have worshiped here, to their prayers and their praise, 
their faith and hope and love. As these walls and col- 
umns are radiant with beauty to him who has the eyes 
to see the fineness of their proportions and the delicacy 
of their simple traceries, so to him who has ears to 
hear they are musical with the faith and prayer and 
praise of a hundred years, and eloquent as they look 
down upon us with admonitions to faith, inspirations to 
service and the counsels of an eternal hope. 

But these are the memories of the meeting-house. 
What of Its hopes? We look forward with large anti- 
cipations for the days to come. May this house be the 
house of this Church for many a year, but, speaking 
for the Church, let me say that she holds this meeting- 
house in no selfish spirit for her own use. It was by 
vote of the town 170 years ago that the foundation 
of the third meeting-house was laid In this place and 
by another vote one hundred years ago that this lot 
was enlarged to receive the beams of this building. It 
Is by the suffrance of the city that this Church holds 
the title to the land on which this building stands. It 
is by the press of the city's population that her prop- 
erty has acquired value while she has had It exempt 
from contributions to the public expense. Therefore 
is the Church bound to serve the people and to minister 
to the social weal and civic uplift of the people. Already 
is it her practice that for no exercise conducted within 
her walls shall any admission ever be charged and that 



20 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

her doors shall swing open to the main street every 
day of every week in every year. 

Not only on every day but on many an evening 
would I see these doors open and the church made a 
place of meeting not only for the worship of God and 
religious instruction, but for the education of the people 
in civic righteousness and their instruction in the noblest 
ideals of social weal. If our fathers met in that first 
meeting-house to consider affairs of state, and If it was 
from those doors that the charter of the infant colony 
was snatched to its safety in the oak, surely in these 
latter days it is meet to use the building for every civic 
good purpose, for the education of the young and the 
stranger in their rights as freemen in this republic. 

The business of religion is the ministry of all 
good gifts unto men, not only the grace of an individ- 
ual salvation but the building up of a social order 
grounded in righteousness and equity. The Church 
makes it her business to lead men into that new life of 
the kingdom of God wherein we are told the Church 
shall be unnecessary, "For I saw no temple there." 
The Church that seeks to build herself up in the com- 
munity shall lose her life, but the Church that seeks to 
build up the community out of her own life shall find 
it again in the blessedness of a people whose life is in 
communion with God. 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 11 



Monday 

The Organ Recital 
and the Reception 

The recital upon the memorial organ was given by 
Mr. John Spencer Camp, organist and director of 
music, according to the program. 

The reception by the ladies of the Women's Home 
Missionary Society in the parlors followed the recital 
and was attended by a large number of the members of 
the church and congregation and their friends. 



22 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 



Historical and 
Congratulatory 
Addresses 



Tuesday 



The Minister presiding said: On the third day of 
December, 1807, this meeting house was dedicated to the 
worship of God and to the use of the First Church of 
Christ in Hartford in the ministry of the Christian gospel. 
We are met in humble gratitude and with glad thanlcs- 
giving to make mention of that day and hour. Let our 
prayer and praise mingle in the use of the hymn, " I love 
Thy kingdom, Lord." 

After the singing of the hymn the Minister said: On 
the nth and 12th days of October in 1883, this Church 
commemorated the 250th anniversary of the installation of 
its first Minister and Teacher. On that occasion the first 
address, which was upon the early topography of the 
town of Hartford, was delivered by Mr. John C. Parsons. 
In response to our invitation, this day his son, Mr. Francis 
Parsons, will tell the story of the building of this, the 
fourth meeting house of this Church in Hartford. 

The Building of the Fourth Meeting House 

By Francis Parsons 

In the spring of the year 1807, Edward Augustus 
Kendall, an Englishman of some modest literary repu- 
tation, was moved by a spirit more adventurous than 
that of most of his contemporaries to undertake a 
journey through New England. Having successfully ac- 
complished this peregrination he reduced to print the 
account of his exploit, and so it happens that the im- 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 23 

pressions which the Hartford of that year made upon a 
stranger and an alien are preserved for us at some length. 
It came about that Mr. Kendall arrived in Hartford on 
the day before election day, then an annual festival, and 
the ceremonies of that occasion demanded a large share of 
his attention. He notes the proceedings at the State 
House and at church, the magnificence of the horse and 
foot guards, the costumes of the chief functionaries, the 
prevalence of election cake, and other matters of detail. 
But we are chiefly interested today in two of his state- 
ments. He tells us that the religious part of the exercises 
were held in the so-called South Meeting House, which 
was a small structure, and was only used on this occasion, 
" because the one more ordinarily used was at the time 
rebuilding." A little farther on he says: "A church of 
large dimensions is building of brick, to be called the 
Church of the First Society, and its site is the same with 
that of the former church of that society. The interior 
promises to be very elegant; and it is to be believed 
that the exterior would have been equally so, but for 
some injudicious deviations form the original design, 
which was by Colonel Wadsworth. This church is in 
the high street." Elsewhere Kendall mentions the fact 
that " Colonel " Wadsworth was a gentlemen who dis- 
played much architectuaral taste, having designed certain 
Hartford houses, distinguished for their elegance. 
A foot-note to the passage just quoted, added in 
1809, gives us a further bit of local color, though it 
intimates that the taste of the builders of this church 
was not strictly in accordance with Puritan canons. 
" This building," it states,, " has since been finished. Its 
belfry is surmounted by a modern cupola, instead of a 
spire. What is still more modern and still more worthy 
of remark, this Puritan church contains a pulpit of 
which the furniture is of green velvet, with cords of 
green and gold, fancifully entwined around the sup- 
porting columns." 

The statement by Kendall that the present meeting- 
house was designed by "Colonel" Wadsworth is the 
only item I have been able to find as to the identity of 
the architect of this building. I gather from this 



24 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

Statement that Kendall refers to Daniel Wadsworth, to 
whom he gives the military title, perhaps partly from a 
recognition of the Kentucky theory that every American 
gentleman of local prominence may safely be alluded to 
in that fashion, and partly from some confusion with 
Daniel's father, Jeremiah, who was well known abroad 
and who in fact bore the military rank thus gratuitously 
bestowed on his son. Daniel Wadsworth, who later 
founded the Wadsworth Atheneum, which is so impor- 
tant a part of our civic life today, was a man of wealth 
and artistic proclivities, whose home, as most of you 
know, was the house, built in 1798, still standing on 
the southwest corner of Prospect street and Atheneum 
street, formerly " Wadsworth Alley." Grandson of a 
former pastor of this church, he was devoted to artistic 
pursuits, the sketches and the water color and stencil 
paintings of his, still preserved in some of our families, 
bearing witness to his constant occupation with pencil 
and brush. His reputation as an artist is more per- 
manently preserved in his illustrations for " Silliman's 
Travels," which include the engravings, now somewhat 
rare, of his estate called " Monte Video " on Talcott 
mountain. Though I can offer no further proof than 
Kendall's statement, which is not quoted by Doctor Wal- 
ker or any other historian of our church, so far as I 
am aware, I feel reasonably certain that Daniel Wads- 
worth, " the Maecenas of Hartford," as he has some- 
times been called, made the original plan for this house 
of worship. 

I am tempted to suggest one even more speculative 
theory as to a possible source of the architectural ideas 
that became tangible in this structure. Any one of you 
who has ever entered the church of St. Martin's in the 
Fields, in Trafalgar Square, London, must have felt 
very much at home. The interior of that church is, in 
fact, strikingly like our own, as any one may see by con- 
sulting that curious and interesting work called "A 
Microcosm of London," which contains a colored print 
of the interior of St. Martin's as it was about the time 
this edifice of ours was finished. It is possible that Daniel 
Wadsworth, who had been in England, had seen St. 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 1$ 

Martin's, or was at least familiar with it through foreign 
prints, of which he was an inveterate collector. I have 
heard, years ago, the tradition that our church was, in 
fact, modeled on the one whose tuneful! bells are so 
pleasantly remembered by every sojourner in the hotels 
that now crowd about Trafalgar Square, but it is a 
shadowy legend at best, and without vouching for it as 
an historical fact I give it merely for what it is worth. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the 
wooden meeting-house which stood lengthwise to Main 
street, on the present corner of Main and Gold streets, 
its northwest portion covering the ground now occupied 
by the southeasterly section of this building, had be- 
come unsatisfactory to the congregation. Dedicated in 
1739, it was at this time, says Doctor Walker, "scanty 
and dilapidated." The first mention in the records of 
The First Ecclesiastical Society of Hartford of the 
matters that led to the erection of the building where 
we are met today, is in the report of the meeting of the 
society held in the State House, as was then the custom, 
December 11, 1804, when Chauncey Goodrich, Daniel 
Wadsworth, William Moseley, Aaron Cook, Enoch 
Perkins, Peter W. Gallaudet, Nathaniel Patten, Samuel 
Kilbourn, Richard Goodman, and John Leffingwell were 
chosen a committee " to consider whether it be expedient" 
to erect a new meeting-house, also to report a plan, 
estimate the expense, and suggest ways and means of 
raising the money. This committee reported to a meet- 
ing called for the purpose on March 22, 1805, in 
substance as follows: That it was expedient to build 
a brick meeting-house, dimensions 102 by 64 feet, with a 
slate roof; that the probable cost would be between 
$18,000 and $20,000, and that the " most eligible " means 
of raising the money was by a sale of the pews and 
slips and by subscriptions. " In deliberating upon the 
subject," the report went on to say, " the committee have 
not overlooked the burthen which must necessarily fall 
upon the more opulent class of the Society. It is, how- 
ever, believed that the urgency and importance of the 
object in view calls for liberal exertions. But whatever 
conclusions the Society may adopt, it will not escape the 



26 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

attention of any of its members that it is, of all con- 
siderations, the most important, that the spirit of con- 
ciliation and harmony which heretofore has distinguished 
the transactions of the Society should mark their pro- 
ceedings in this interesting business," 

The report was accepted and it was voted that a 
new meeting-house such as the committee recommended 
be built at such place as the county court should 
designate, at or near the ground on which the old meet- 
ing-house stood, provided the money could be raised in 
the manner indicated. George Goodwin, Aaron Cook, 
Richard Goodman, Peter W. Gallaudet, and James 
Hosmer were appointed a committee to build the meet- 
ing-house, and were authorized to raise the money by 
selling the use of one-quarter of the pews and slips on 
the lower floor for a limited or unlimited time, and the 
use of one-half for a term not exceeding thirty years, 
and the use of one-half of the gallery pews for not 
more than thirty years if the pews and slips on the 
lower floor did not realize sufficient funds — "the sums 
to be raised by all such sales to be secured by notes of 
hand with good security." In the vote the society 
cautiously provided that though the title to the build- 
ing should be in the society, it should not be obligated 
to raise at any time any part of the expense, except the 
payment of the members of the committee for their 
services, and the committee which was thus made re- 
sponsible for the expenditures, with the pews and slips 
as their security, was forbidden to proceed until enough 
money should be raised, — an almost unnecessary pro- 
hibition in view of the responsibility Mr. Gallaudet 
and his associates were thus shouldered with. The 
committee was further authorized to sell the old meet- 
ing-house and apply the avails to the cost of the new 
structure; also to negotiate with the town and receive 
from the town a grant, or exchange lands with the 
town, — it being apparent that more space than the 
society then held would be required for the building as 
proposed. 

In Volume XXII of the Hartford Land Records, 
pages 359 and 362 respectively, are recorded the con- 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 27 

veyances that effectuated the exchange of lands finally 
agreed upon. The deed of the town to the Society, dated 
November 21, 1805, was executed by Andrew Kings- 
bury, Amasa Keys, and James Wells, a committee 
appointed and authorized by a town meeting held 
August 5th, of that year. It conveyed the land on which 
this building stands, except part covered by the old 
meeting-house which the society already owned, the ex- 
treme depth being 131 feet and the width at the widest 
part 65 feet, the northeast corner being in the westerly 
line of Main street, seventeen feet southerly from the 
present property of the church to the north. The deed 
of the society to the town, dated November 16, 1805, 
conveyed the south part of the land on which the old 
meeting-house stood, and a shallow strip adjoining on 
the south, which had formed the entrance from the 
street to the south door of the old church building and 
part of which lay in the present limits of Gold street. 
By both deeds a mutual gangway or passway into the 
burying-ground, seventeen feet wide and one hundred 
and thirty-one feet deep from the street, was established 
next south of the ground on which the new building 
was to be erected. 

The land deeded by the town to the society was 
part of the burying-ground and contained, as it still 
does, a number of graves, most of them probably those 
of Indians and negroes. So far as the amount of ground 
involved goes, the society got much the better bargain 
in this exchange, as the land conveyed to the town was 
a much smaller piece than that acquired. In the 
society's deed to the town there was no express reserva- 
tion of ownership in that part of the old edifice standing 
on the land conveyed, but it was evidently understood 
that the society retained the whole of this building, 
which the committee, according to their authority, sold 
December 2, 1805, for three hundred and five dollars 
to John Leffingwell, a member of the society. From this 
sale the brick and stone work, bell, rope, clock, clock- 
weights, and new timber put in to secure the building, 
were excepted. In constructing the old building much 
wooden material of the preceding meeting-house — the 



28 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

second meeting-house of this church — had been used, 
and one of our historians intimates that inasmuch as 
some of the timber from the third structure was used 
in our present building, this church might contain today 
some woodvvorlc formerly forming part of that second 
edifice. It seems probable, however, from this record of 
the sale to Mr. Leffingwell that the only parts of the old 
church used in the present building were the compara- 
tively new timbers employed in the way of repair. We 
learn from the manuscript notes of Oliver Boardman 
now in the possession of the Connecticut Historical 
Society that the last service in the old church was held 
on Sunday, December 8, 1805. At the close of that 
service Dr. Strong, in Mr. Boardman's words, " informed 
the Congregation it was the last Sabbath we were to 
meet for Public Worship in this place, — the house was 
to be taken down, — to find a place for a new one 
the audience were solemn — affected — and 
Impress'd as with Solemn thoughts. It was a crowded 
Assembly. Tuesday the loth inst. they began to de- 
molish the house. 

Peter W. Gallaudet had been chosen treasurer and 
accountant of the building committee, and it is from 
one of his account books, which came into the possession 
of the society in 1883 from his grandson, Dr. Edward 
M. Gallaudet of Washington, that most of our informa- 
tion as to the details of the construction of the new 
meeting-house is derived. The first few pages of this 
book are occupied with the contracts for material made 
during the winter of 1805-06, and in view of the pres- 
ent prices for building material some of these contracts 
furnish comparisons that are interesting. White and 
yellow pine board was bought at twelve dollars per 
thousand feet, two-inch pine plank brought twenty to 
twenty-four dollars, oak joist ten dollars. Thaddeus 
Barbour and Samuel Lemon of Windsor agreed to fur- 
nish one hundred thousand " good weather brick," and 
eight thousand to ten thousand " lighter colored red 
brick well burnt that will ring " at five dollars per 
thousand and more brick from the Windsor kilns was 
bought at the same rate. The foundation stones came 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 29 

from the Rocky Hill quarries and cost seven shillings 
a perch, when measured in the walls. Many of the 
nails were bought from the state prison. The actual 
commencement of this building was on Thursday, March 
6, 1806, when the stone work for the foundation was 
begun. No general contract for the construction was 
made, but the material seems to have been purchased 
directly, as has been indicated, and the laborers, in most 
cases, were hired and paid individually. The employee 
whose position approximated most closely that of a gen- 
eral contractor seems to have been David Wadsworth, 
a member of the society, who, with his son, worked on 
the church himself and apparently furnished several 
workmen whose names and time, however, were entered 
individually in the account book. Prices for labor were as 
low in proportion as for material, varying from eighty- 
three cents a day for ordinary workmen to one dollar 
and thirty-three cents a day for more skilled labor. 

The workmen had one perquisite, however, which 
is lacking in such cases at the present time and which 
doubtless with some of them served as an extra induce- 
ment. There were disbursements every month for 
various forms of intoxicants, the cost varying from five 
to eighteen dollars a month, the total expense of which, 
during the building of the church. Doctor Walker 
estimates as about one hundred and fifty dollars. These 
stimulating aids to labor are variously termed by Mr. 
Gallaudet, " spirits," " liquor," " punch," and " brandy." 
The carpenters generally preferred " rum," the other 
workmen " liquor." We meet such indefinite items as 
"masons for a treat 33c.," and on special occasions, 
such, for example, as the raising of the steeple, punch 
appears to have been served, witness the item of August 
18, 1808, " Tamerands for punch on raising the steeple 
to Its height 42c.," which incidentally furnished proof, 
confirmed by other evidence, that the steeple was not 
completed till the summer following the dedication of 
the meeting-house. However incongruous such Items ap- 
pear to us today in connection with the building of this 
church, we must remember that such incidental expenses 



30 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

were an established custom of the time and that New 
England rum was a staple article of consumption. 

As the work progressed it became evident that the 
cost would exceed the estimate. The first subscriptions, 
against which were to be credited the prices of the 
pews and slips when sold, had amounted only to about 
fifteen thousand dollars, and on October 17, 1807, the 
society authorized the committee to sell the remaining 
one-fourth part of the pews on the lower floor in fee 
simple, and also the one-fourth part of the gallery 
pews in fee simple instead of for thirty years. It was 
also voted that the committee procure "a suitable cushion 
and trimmings for the pulpit and also Venetian blinds 
for the window back of the pulpit," and If necessary a 
curtain for the window, and a carpet for the pulpit and 
pulpit stairs. 

Abandoning for a moment the chronological order 
of our narrative, let us look at the settlement of the 
matter of the sale of the seating accommodations of the 
building and the closing of the committee's accounts in 
the years subsequent to the dedication. The former 
question presented some technical difficulties, and in 
December 1808 Theodore Dwight, Enoch Perkins and 
Jonathan W. Edwards were appointed a committee to 
" devise a mode in which the titles to the use of the pews 
and slips . . . shall be confirmed and established In 
the purchasers." This committee doubtless prepared 
the form of deed that was used and recommended the 
authorization of Peter W. Gallaudet to execute the 
conveyances on behalf of the Society, which authority 
was granted In March, 1809. At the same date Theodore 
Dwight and Nathaniel Terry were appointed a com- 
mittee to apply to the General Assembly for authority 
to record the titles to the pews and slips In the Society's 
records, Instead of in the town records, and this per- 
mission was given by the Assembly at its session the 
following spring, so that In our records today may be 
seen the copies of the original Instruments. The in- 
dividual ownership of the use of these parts of the build- 
ing was the cause later of much embarrassment, and 
when these ownerships were bought by the Society, 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 3 1 

the sum paid was the origin of an indebtedness which 
it took many years to remove. 

The settlement of the committee's accounts was 
delayed for some years, mainly on account of the clause in 
the original vote making the committee responsible, 
with the sittings as their security. The sales had realized 
twenty-seven thousand seven hundred and twenty-three 
dollars, and further subscriptions and other incidental 
receipts increased this amount considerably. Certain 
receipts are entered in the accounts as " rents " and from 
these items and from a vote of the Society, December 
1 8, 1807, that it was the opinion of that body that the 
church building should not be used for any other pur- 
pose than religious worship, we have some reason to 
infer that the committee had attempted to increase its 
insujfficient resources by renting the structure, before 
dedication, for other than purely religious purposes 
when its construction had become far enough advanced 
to make it available as an assembly hall. The expense 
had indeed been far larger than had been anticipated. 
Mr. Gallaudet's account book shows that up to De- 
cember, 18 1 2, the disbursements had amounted to thirty- 
two thousand fourteen dollars and twenty-six cents. 
The committee had borrowed the balance necessary to 
make the final disbursements from the Hartford Bank on 
Mr. Gallaudet's note, as treasurer, for two thousand one 
hundred dollars (on which one hundred dollars appears 
subsequently to have been paid), endorsed by George 
Goodwin, and it was not until December of 18 15 that 
the Society finally relieved the members of the committee 
of their burden, voting, on recommendation of John 
Caldwell, Thomas S. Williams, James H. Wells, and 
William Ely, a committee previously appointed to con- 
sider the matter, to assume the note at the bank and 
take the pews and slips of which the building committee 
had not been able to dispose. 

A plan of the lower floor of the edifice and of the 
galleries was made, and from this, and the record 
of the deeds and the entries in the committee's account 
book, we are able to identify the pews where the mem- 
bers of this congregation sat when the seats finally came 



32 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

to be sold. Along the walls, both on the ground floor 
and in the galleries were the square pews, two, one at 
the middle of each side on the ground floor, being dec- 
orated with canopies and known as the governors' pews. 
The aisles were in the same position as they are today, 
and the slips that opened from each side of the center 
aisle and from one side of the north and south aisles 
were of about the same size as those of the present time. 
Daniel Wadsworth had been the largest subscriber 
and took altogether six pews and slips, but the one he 
habitually occupied was doubtless Pew No. 3 in the 
southwest corner of the building. There, in imagina- 
tion, we may see him — a frail, good-looking young man, 
doubtless wrapped in the artist's cloak he was fond of 
wearing, for the meeting-house had no stove or furnace, 
and beside him his wife Faith, who was the daughter 
of the second Jonathan Trumbull. Pew No. 26, in the 
opposite corresponding corner, was purchased by John 
Caldwell, the first president of the Hartford Bank, a 
merchant of large experience and at one time of con- 
siderable wealth, who had, however, lost much of his for- 
tune in the French depredations on American shipping at 
the close of the eighteenth century. Midway between the 
two westerly pillars on the north side of the church in 
slip No. 32 sat Theodore Dwight, brother of Timothy 
Dwight, then president of Yale College, one of the 
" Hartford Wits," who had just declined a renomina- 
tion to Congress, and was writing political articles and 
verses for the Connecticut Coiirant and other news- 
papers. Another of the " Hartford Wits," John Trum- 
bull, was a member of this congregation and owned slip 
No. 120, the third from the front on the south side of 
the middle aisle. At the time this building was dedicated 
he was a judge of the Superior Court, and in the fol- 
lowing year he received from the General Assembly the 
additional appointment of judge of the Supreme Court 
of Errors. It is probably as a poet, however, and the 
author of " McFingal," which had been published in 
1782, that he is chiefly known to posterity. In the slip 
adjoining John Trumbull's on the south sat David Wat- 
kinson, then only twenty-nine years of age and engaged, 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 33 

in business with his brother William, in amassing the 
large fortune that by his will he distributed so generously 
for the benefit of the city of his adoption. Just back 
of Mr. Watkinson's was the slip bought by Dr. Mason 
F. Cogswell, an eminent physician and philanthropist, 
whose diary gives us vivid glimpses of every-day life 
here a century and more ago. It was his interest in the 
education and care of the deaf and dumb, originally 
awakened through the infirmity of his youngest daughter, 
that, more than anything else, led to the establishment 
in this city of the American School for the Deaf. Per- 
haps the most distinguished member of this congregation 
at the time we speak of was Chauncey Goodrich, who 
with his wife, a daughter of Oliver Wolcott, and one of 
the most famous beauties of her day, was accustomed to 
sit in slip No. 84, a few seats in front of the middle of 
the center aisle on the north side. Prominent in all state 
and city affairs, at the time of the dedication he had just 
been elected to the United States Senate, a position he 
resigned six years later to accept the office of lieutenant 
governor. 

But there is time to mention only a few of those 
worthy predecessors of ours who gathered in this 
edifice a hundred years ago today to listen to Dr. 
Strong's dedication sermon, the manuscript of which, 
as tradition has it, is enclosed in the gilded dove which 
has withstood the storm and sunshine of a century 
upon our weather-vane, and which Mr. Gallaudet's ac- 
counts show William Wadsworth was paid a dollar 
and a half for making. During the erection of the 
church the congregation had worshipped in the theatre 
on Theatre (now Temple) street, and it was fortunate 
that December 3, 1807, was by all accounts an un- 
usually mild and pleasant day for the season, for the 
building must have seemed rather bare and cold with 
its new paint, uncarpeted floors, and no artificial heat, 
except possibly a few foot stoves of the period. The 
interior which that audience looked upon was not quite 
as we see it today. At the western end of the church, 
under and above the galleries, were windows, since 
blocked up. There was no arched ceiling above the 
3 



34 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

central part of this room. The recess where the pulpit 
stands today was not built till 1852. The pulpit itself, 
of dark-colored wood, probably cherry, stood directly 
at the head of the centre aisle and was of a sufficient 
height to enable the occupant effectively to address the 
galleries, which were far higher than now, having been 
twice lowered since that time. The pulpit was sup- 
ported on fluted columns and was approached on either 
side by graceful, winding stairways, on which, during 
crowded assemblies in this house in later years, it was 
the custom of the boys from the neighboring pews to sit. 

Contemporary accounts bear witness to the beauty 
of the dedication day and the throng that crowded the 
house. Rev. Dr. Thomas Robbins of East Windsor 
writes in his diary for December 3, 1807, "Very warm 
and pleasant. Rode to Hartford. Attended the dedi- 
cation of the new meeting-house. One of the most 
solemn and affecting scenes I have ever witnessed. A 
very great collection of people." The Connecticut 
Courant, in its issue for December 9, 1807, describes 
the occasion as follows: "On Thursday last the new 
meeting-house of the North Society in this city was 
dedicated. The beauty of the day, the novelty of the 
occasion, and the celebrity of the preacher, attracted a 
great concourse of people from this and the neighboring 
towns. The introductory prayer was made by the Rev. 
Mr. Flint; the dedicatory prayer by the Rev. Dr. 
Strong, who also preached a sermon from the ninety- 
third Psalm, fifth verse. The concluding prayer was 
made by the Rev. Dr. Perkins. Several hymns, com- 
posed for the occasion, were sung, and followed by an 
anthem of Handel's. The singing, under the direc- 
tion of Mr. Roberts, animated the Christian, and de- 
lighted those who are charmed by the melody of 
sounds. The exercises of the day were peculiarly 
solemn and appropriate." 

Fashions in thought and phraseology change with 
the years and many an address, a century^ old, that 
doubtless inspired the hearers' hearts on its original 
delivery, seems stilted and prosy enough to us now. 
But Dr. Strong's dedication sermon on the text, " Holi- 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 35 

ness becometh Thine house, O Lord, forever," makes 
excellent and vigorous reading today. It must indeed 
have been an occasion full of meaning for the aged 
preacher who had ministered to this people for so 
many years and through experiences so various. Toward 
the end of his discourse he addresses himself in words 
we may well repeat on this spot today, to the young 
people in his congregation — young people who grew 
old and died many years ago. " My dear youth," he 
says, " you behold the zeal of your fathers, who have 
erected this building, and who daily pray that you may 
live long to worship the God whom they have served. 
Forsake not the God of your fathers; cease not to 
serve Him and obey His commandments. We who 
stand where the word of God is dispensed, do now, in 
His awful presence, charge you, that when the fathers 
sleep, this place may be holy to the Lord." 

Introducing Professor Walker the Minister said: 
The First Church of Christ in Hartford, in Its member- 
ship and life today, owes more to the memory of George 
Leon Walker, under the providence of God, than to any 
other one man. It was his voice that interpreted the 
history of the Church at Its 250th anniversary. By our 
invitation, his son, Dr. Wllliston Walker, Professor of 
Ecclesiastical History in Yale University, will interpret 
for us the spirit of the time of the building of this meet- 
ing-house. 

A Hundred Years Ago 

By Williston Walker 

The centennial of the dedication of the stately 
meeting-house which we commemorate today naturally 
carries our thoughts back to the times in which it was 
built, and the kind of world they lived in who first 
worshipped in it. This task of recalling to our memory 
some of the circumstances and Interests of a century 
ago is the more plainly indicated for the present speaker 



36 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

because his predecessor on this occasion has set forth 
so clearly the facts regarding the erection of the edifice 
which is the chief centre of our thought on this occasion. 

To take the journey backward in imagination from 
the busy Hartford of the present, with its lofty build- 
ings, its crowded streets and its activities in insurance, 
banking and manufacturing, to the comparatively simple 
city in which this structure was the largest edifice a 
century ago, is no easy task. It was, indeed, judged by 
the standards of present growth, a small community 
which this place of worship was built to serve. The 
town, which then included what is now West Hartford, 
had had a population of 5,347 as reported in the census 
of 1800, and was to reach only 6,003 in that of 18 10, 
three years after the erection of our meeting-house. 
No bridge spanned the Connecticut in the State, and a 
ferry was to be the means of communication to the 
East Hartford side for two years after the dedication 
which we recall. 

Though the city had been incorporated in 1784, 
distinctly as an aid to commercial enterprise, and a 
bank had been opened in 1792, its business interests 
were still chiefly confined to those of commerce; and 
the development of the enterprises with which the pres- 
ent fame of Hartford is associated, were yet in the 
future. One important connecting link there was in- 
deed, between the Hartford of that day and this — 
the Connecticut Courant, then supplying the residents 
of this city with news weekly as it had done since 1764, 
and as it continues to do in more ample and frequent 
fashion as The Hartford Courant. 

Politically, Connecticut and this Hartford congre- 
gation, generally, were strongly Federalists, the State 
being under the governorship of the younger Jonathan 
Trumbull, and decided antagonists to the national policies 
represented by Thomas Jefferson, then approaching the 
end of his second term as president. Already the clouds 
were gathering which were to result in the tempest of 
war in 181 2, and were casting their disturbing shadows 
upon the foreign relations and business enterprises of 
Connecticut. Ecclesiastically, the town was divided be- 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 37 

tween the adherents of three Congregational societies, 
those popularly known as the North and the South, now 
the First and the Second, and that of West Hartford. 
The Congregational order was that supported by taxa- 
tion imposed by law, though our Episcopal and Baptist 
fellow-Christians had gained firm footing in the com- 
munity, and the Methodists were attempting to plant 
their type of organization in what was then proving 
unfriendly soil. 

Small as Hartford was, it was then, as now, a de- 
lightful place of residence, a seat of government for 
the commonwealth, and numbered among its population 
many of wide experience in legal, political, and com- 
mercial affairs, and of interesting personality, developed 
by culture and contact with men. It was, moreover, a 
congregation of unusual distinction that was associated 
with the First Church and that worshipped in its newly 
erected meeting-house. 

Yet no man among them all was of more marked 
personal characteristics than its minister, Rev. Dr. 
Nathan Strong, then just completing the thirty-fourth 
year of a distinguished pastorate. Courteous and rather 
courtly in manner. Doctor Strong was yet noted for a 
pungent wit, not without considerable sting to its victims, 
many examples of which still survive in the traditions 
of this city. Equally characterized by tenderness of feel- 
ing and marked by much seriousness in the pulpit, his 
sermons were greatly admired by a community which 
looked upon him with pride and probably, also, with a 
certain feeling of awe, as its leading minister. His 
own experience and religious development had been In 
a measure an epitome of the changes through which this 
Hartford community had been passing in the years im- 
mediately previous to the completing of this meeting- 
house. Settled in the pastorate on January 5, 1774, 
Doctor Strong had entered with ardent enthusiasm into 
the support of the patriotic cause during the Revolution- 
ary struggle, and had shared with his congregation the 
hardships and distresses of that trying period. 

The war over, the attention of the Hartford pastor, 
like that of most other thinking men, was profoundly 



38 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

absorbed by the discussions which led to the adoption 
of the American Constitution. And on the completion 
of that successful endeavor to bind these, till then, 
loosely joined commonwealths, into a "more perfect 
union," the pastor essayed to have a share in the com- 
mercial development of this community, for which the 
return of confidence, due to the more settled conditions 
consequent upon the adoption of the Constitution, gave 
occasion. The decade from 1790 onward was one of 
enlarging business opportunity, and the pastor was in- 
duced to have his share in it. But the form which his 
enterprise took seems strange enough to our altered age. 
From 1790 to its failure in 1798, Doctor Strong was 
partner in the distillery of Reuben Smith & Co., Mr. 
Smith being his brother-in-law, — an enterprise which, 
in spite of its unhappy issue in bankruptcy, does not 
seem to have disturbed his relations to the people of 
his charge. 

But while Doctor Strong was passing through these 
trying financial experiences, Hartford, in company with 
all New England and a large section of the Middle 
States, was entering upon a great transforming religious 
experience in which the Hartford pastor himself fully 
shared. A series of revivals, beginning about the year 
1792 in some parts of New England, and reaching 
Hartford in 1794, to be repeated in 1798-99, were 
changing the whole religious situation. In contrast with 
the spiritual apathy and indifference characteristic of the 
Revolutionary period and of the exhausted years imme- 
diately following that struggle, religion was taking on 
a fresh importance in the eyes of the people of this 
city. Preaching was becoming more insistent and the 
demands of a strenuous and self-denying Christian life 
were being increasingly appreciated. The thoughtful 
and deeply conscientious type of piety anxious to serve 
God and one's generation and somewhat ascetic in its 
view of conduct, especially in relation to amusements, 
which we often, and justly, associate in our minds with 
Puritanism, had its great reawakening for this region in 
connection with the revival movement inaugurated here 
in Hartford in 1794. The pastor of this church felt 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 39 

its power, and from that time onward his ministry be- 
came marked by a new earnestness and a spiritual 
fruitfulness thus far absent. 

In 1798, for instance, Doctor Strong served as one 
of a committee of four to draft the constitution of the 
"Missionary Society of Connecticut," the objects of 
which, as announced in that document, were "to chris- 
tianize the heathen in North America and to support 
and promote Christian knowledge in the new settlements 
within the United States." On Doctor Strong, in con- 
nection with Connecticut's historian. Rev. Dr. Benjamin 
Trumbull of North Haven, was laid the duty of pre- 
senting a suitable memorial to the governor and council 
of the State to procure the incorporation of the mis- 
sionary enterprise thus formally established. 

This was not, indeed, the beginning of missionary 
work by the Connecticut churches of the Congregational 
order. In some form or other, though with interrup- 
tions, from 1774 onward, they had attempted to do 
their duty by the new settlements in Vermont, New 
York and Ohio. That enterprise, however, now took on 
definitely organized form and constituted the first Con- 
gregational Missionary Society, an undertaking which 
aroused speedy imitation in the other New England 
States. Such a work demanded publicity and this the 
pastor of this church was quick to recognize. With 
Doctor Strong there originated the plan of our first 
religious periodical, The Connecticut Evangelical Maga- 
zine, the publication of which began with July, 1800. 
Issued once a month under a board of editors, of which 
Doctor Strong was a member, it furnished intelligence 
of the revival movements then greatly arousing these 
churches. It discussed theological problems, which then 
commanded a larger circle of readers than would be 
the case at present, and gave accounts, largely copied 
from English papers, of those wider-reaching enterprises 
beyond the seas, which the zeal of William Carey and 
his Baptist associates in England, or the newly organ- 
ized London Missionary Society and Church Missionary 
Society were furthering. From the home of one of the 
editors of this magazine, Rev. Samuel J. Mills of Tor- 



40 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

ringford, and we may believe largely through the in- 
fluence of the missionary intelligence which Doctor 
Strong's happily conceived journal thus disseminated, 
was to come the founder of American Foreign Missions, 
Samuel J. Mills, Jr., a student in Williams College at 
the time when this meeting-house was dedicated. Already, 
before that event, the little company of brethren had 
held its Haystack Prayer Meeting in 1806, at Williams- 
town, from which the genesis of the American Board 
has often been said to date, though the actual organ- 
ization of our great missionary society, which has enlisted 
the Interests of this church and of its pastors from 
Doctor Strong to the present, was not effected, as we 
all know, until 18 10. 

It is evident, thus, I think, that certainly for more 
than ten years before the dedication of the meeting- 
house whose anniversary we commemorate, this region 
was undergoing a vigorous spiritual awakening which was 
pressing upon the community not merely the claims of 
personal religion, but the wider interest of the advance- 
ment of the kingdom of God. In this quickening and 
enlargement of the spiritual vision the pastor of this 
church was conspicuously a leader, and we may believe 
that the new meeting-house was but one symptom and 
expression of that reapprehension of spiritual values 
which so conspicuously marked the time of its erection. 

Its enlarged ^ size and more ornate appearance as 
compared^ with its relatively humble predecessor, and 
the substitution of the more enduring brick for the 
wood of which that building was constructed, bespeaks 
not merely the growth of Hartford in population and 
in wealth, but the increasing hold which religion was 
taking upon the people of this community. It stands to 
us a perpetual witness of their awakening faith and 
zeal. 

From point of view of modern conceptions of what 
is appropriate to religious activity, the life of this church 
at the time of the erection of the meeting-house seem 
singularly barren and one-sided. Doubtless the interest 
felt in the^ development of personal religious character 
was more intense than at present. Men were strenuous 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 4I 

with themselves, and in their conception of what was 
required in personal surrender and consecration for 
entrance upon a religious life, to a degree which our 
age too little appreciates. The period was introspective. 
Personal covenants with God, in which the would-be 
Christian pledged himself in solemn written form, were 
not uncommon manifestations of religious experience, 
and any one who has read many of the manuscript 
journals of that period must have been impressed with 
the frequency and minuteness of self-examination. The 
Christian life was undoubtedly viewed to a far greater 
degree than at present, as difficult and involving infi- 
nite possibilities of self-deception. An emphasis was 
laid upon clear and intelligent doctrinal apprehensions 
which undoubtedly enabled the Christian of that age 
to give a " reason for the faith that was in him," where 
those of our own time can do little more than express 
a hope. The typical religious experience of the period 
produced strong men, profoundly conscious of their own 
ill desert m the sight of God and of the greatness of 
the salvation by which they believed that they had been 
translated from the kingdom of darkness to that of light. 
Yet in spite of the beginnings of Christian missions 
at home and abroad, of which we have just spoken, 
the opportunities for spiritual development in religious 
activity which were open to the ordinary member of 
this Hartford church at the time of the erection of this 
meeting-house, were very few. Two services on Sun- 
day, held in the morning and afternoon, and each 
marked by _ a sermon often of a doctrinal character, 
nourished his spiritual intelligence, and we may believe 
fed his inward life. The whole community attended 
church to a degree at present unknown, quite as much, 
however, under the impulse of social pressure as of 
religious conviction. But this duty done, and the 
domestic religious exercises of a strict and rather 
wearisome observation of the Sabbath and of family 
prayers, morning and evening, added in Christian house- 
holds, there was little for the average Christian to do. 
Under the excitement of the revival movement this 
church voted, in 1797, to light its meeting-house for 



42 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

evening lectures. But these added services, which may 
perhaps be considered beginnings of the prayer meet- 
ing with us, though the participation of the brethren 
was long insignificant, were looked upon by many of 
the conservative members of the congregation as too 
new-fashioned and experimental, and it was not until 
1 8 13, five years and a half after the dedication of this 
edifice, that private enterprise undertook to supply a 
chapel for weekly meetings, which, even then, did not 
appear a necessity to the church as a whole. Not till 
18 18, more than ten years after this church was built, 
was a Sunday-school to be organized in Hartford, and 
a new and exceedingly fruitful field of Christian effort 
opened to the ordinary membership of this church. 

The multiform activities, philanthropic, educational, 
and reformatory, which now justly enlist so much of 
the services of Christian people were still largely, though 
not wholly, in the future, and a sense of obligation to 
further the moral and spiritual well-being of the com- 
munity as a whole was relatively but little felt in that 
age, with its emphasis on personal religious experience. 
Yet one important monument exists that shows that 
Doctor Strong and this community were awakening to 
the needs of those in misfortune. The Charitable So- 
ciety of Hartford had been founded, primarily at Doc- 
tor Strong's initiative, in November, 1792, and for 
years he was its largest contributor. Incorporated in 
1809, it had for its object not the relief of "common 
paupers," but the aid of the " industrious, who are dis- 
posed to help themselves, and who, when no uncommon 
misfortune happens, are able to live comfortably." It 
endeavored " to aid the widow and orphan, and fam- 
ilies reduced, by sickness and other calamities, from 
competency to want." This nobly planned enterprise 
still does its beneficent work among us; and its pro- 
motion must be reckoned one of Dr. Strong's good 
services to this city. But, as compared with the wide- 
reaching benevolences of the present, Hartford then 
afforded few avenues for this most Christian form of 
helpfulness. We have undoubtedly lost not a little of 
the intensity of conviction which characterized that 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 43 

epoch, but this loss has not been without great gain 
in the increasing appreciation of the responsibilities of 
Christian service and of the wider claims upon Chris- 
tian activity in the kingdom of God. The opportunities 
of an ordinary Christian to share in its advancement 
are vastly more varied and numerous at the present 
time than they then were. 

One change of considerable significance may perhaps 
be mentioned as illustrative of a broadening conception 
of the possibilities of worship which marks a distinction 
between the time this edifice was erected and the present. 
This church has always been fairly illustrative of average 
New England standards of public worship. In the first 
quarter of the eighteenth century its pastor, Timothy 
Woodbridge, was an earnest advocate of the then novel 
and not a little criticised use of printed tunes and of a 
choir secured from the members of the congregation as 
an aid in public worship. The choir itself had received 
much development by the time of the dedication of 
this house, and its services were made an important 
feature of that ceremony. It was the age of the sing- 
ing school and of the fugue. An anthem of Handel's 
delighted the congregation gathered for the dedication 
exercises on that December day, one hundred years ago. 
But the human voice was still reinforced by those earlier 
aids, the flute and the bass viol, and it was not till 1822 
that an organ, which Puritan feeling had long resisted, 
was to be installed in this meeting-house. 

Could we of this generation be carried back by some 
magic to that congregation of one hundred years ago, 
we should have been impressed, had we been present at 
its Sunday worship, with the prominence given In 
preaching to doctrinal themes. Popular conception at 
the present time of the severity, as it Is often described, 
that prevailed in the preaching of that day is not a 
little exaggerated, but there can be no question that 
our ancestors of that generation were fed on vigorous 
spiritual meat. There was a general Interest In the com- 
niunlty, now largely absent, in the exposition of Chris- 
tian doctrine as an intellectual feat, that stimulated the 
preacher to develop the doctrinal type of sermon. There 



44 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

was, furthermore, as contrasted with the present, a pre- 
vailing conception that theology is essentially a science 
of exact Intellectual definition, of logical deduction, and 
that its conclusions are sustained by close-knit argumenta- 
tion; a conviction for which we of the present have 
largely substituted the belief that theology makes its 
prime appeal to the feelings and the will, and Is not, 
therefore, so much a matter of Intellectual definition as 
of religious and ethical consciousness. 

This altered feeling regarding the demonstration of 
Christian truth which undoubtedly prevails to a large 
extent at the present day has robbed the doctrinal ser- 
mon of much of the Interest which it then possessed, 
has assuaged much of the polemic fire which character- 
ized the discussions of those days, and has given room 
for a vastly greater variety in the presentation of re- 
ligious truth than would have been met with a hundred 
years ago. For had we taken our places In that ancient 
congregation we should have been struck not merely 
with the prevalence of doctrinal preaching but with the 
uniformity of type which prev^alled in this region. 
Connecticut and Western Massachusetts had felt the 
powerful impress of Jonathan Edwards, and a hundred 
years ago the theolog}^ of this region was distinctly 
Edwardean. Shades of difference there might be, but 
they were, after all, only variations In one common 
pattern. In Eastern Massachusetts, indeed, a hundred 
years ago a movement of another character was In 
progress which was to lead, speedily, to open Unitar- 
lanism, but this region was, and was to be, unaffected 
by It. 

One custom of early New England which the Ed- 
wardean influence strongly combated, and which was 
rapidly disappearing before Its vigorous attack, still 
persisted In this church a hundred years ago, and In the 
absence of record it is difficult to say how far it sur- 
vived the date of the dedication of this meeting-house. 
That is, the custom of Half-way Covenant membership. 
Since the discussions of the seventh decade of the 
seventeenth century this ancient church had received 
members not merely to full communion on profession 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 45 

of faith and Christian experience, but members to the 
privileges of baptism and church dIscipHne — for church 
disciphne was deemed a privilege — on profession of 
an intellectual assent to the truths of Christianity and 
of a willingness to submit to the government of the 
church. Such were a very considerable proportion — 
just how large a proportion the aggravating absence of 
records makes it impossible to say — of the membership 
of this church a hundred years ago. But the custom 
was rapidly passing away, and the speaker has been 
told that there was a general understanding among the 
ministry of this region by the time this meeting-house 
was erected, that where the practice of such admission 
had not been begun among older members of the 
family, it should not be instituted, thus bringing the 
custom into general, though somewhat gradual, disuse. 

One of the most marked contrasts between the pres- 
ent and the time of which we are thinking is in the 
degree of charity and often mutual good-will, also, 
prevailing between the different flocks of our much 
divided Christian fellowship. The people of one hun- 
dred years ago had relatively little knowledge of any 
type of Christianity save their own, and even less 
sympathy for other forms of the Christian life. A 
degree of mutual intolerance was felt between such few 
variant types of Christian fellowships as then existed 
on Connecticut soil which has now happily become 
merely a historic memory. Such a friendly association 
as we witness here today, for example, would have 
been inconceivable a hundred years ago, and this mutual 
toleration and cooperation, this recognition of common 
interests and fellowship in the kingdom of God, is one 
of the greatest, and one of the most hopeful, contrasts 
between the present time and that at which we glance. 

But in spite of all differences between the present 
and the past, the great essential faiths and experiences 
which go to make up the Christian life form a vital 
bond between the men and women of a hundred years 
ago and those who now worship in this ancient meet- 
ing-house. They would have a good many things to 
learn, and perhaps some considerable mental readjust- 



46 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

ment in learning them, could they come back and enter 
our congregation today. We, could we be transported 
to their fellowship a hundred years ago, would feel that 
much was relatively provincial and undeveloped. Bene- 
ficial as might be for us the tonic of their spiritual 
earnestness, especially in that revival age, we should feel 
their limitations of opportunities for religious work, and 
should regard as foreign their emphasis upon the in- 
trospective and personal, rather than the outreaching 
and social aspects of Christian service. These differences 
are, after all, relatively superficial. They would feel at 
home, we may trust, among us, and we certainly should 
with them. For to them and to us, alike, this venerable 
house of worship stands a witness to faith in a covenant- 
keeping God whose constant blessings they, and we, 
desire gratefully to recognize; to loyalty to our Lord 
Jesus Christ whom they and we, alike, would honor as 
our Master and example; and to the abiding worth of 
fellowship in His service for the upbuilding of the 
Christian life and for the advancement of His kingdom 
in the world. This ancient meeting-house has borne its 
witness of faith and loyalty and service for a century; 
may it continue so to bear it for centuries yet to come. 

At the close of Professor Walker's address the Min- 
ister called the attention of the congregation to the 
portrait of Nathan Strong, the work of Mr. Charles 
Noel Flagg, recently presented to the Church by Deacon 
Charles T. Wells. He also took occasion to acknowl- 
edge the presence of a number of ministers and representa- 
tives of churches of other towns and cities. 

Introducing Doctor Parker he said: Of our sister 
Congregational churches, which shall stand as representa- 
tive save the Second Church of Christ in Hartford, our 
sister through two centuries? And for these Churches 
who shall speak save her beloved and honored minister, 
Doctor Parker, dear to the hearts of all our people as to 
the people of the city and the State? 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 47 

For the Sisterhood of the Congregational Churches 

By the Rev. Edwin Pond Parker, D.D. 

The pleasant duty assigned me on this anniversary 
occasion is that of presenting to this church and congre- 
gation, and to their pastor as well, the cordial congratu- 
lations of the several churches and ministers of our city. 
Such congratulations I do, here and now, formally and 
heartily present and offer, speaking for all our churches 
and ministers whether of the Congregational order or 
any other. For in a larger sense than that of sectarian- 
ism or denominationalism, the First Church of Christ in 
Hartford is our Mother and Metropolitan church, of 
whose past history we are proud, in whose present pros- 
perity we rejoice, and for whose future welfare we 
cherish ardent hopes. Two things only make it fitting 
that I should have been selected to perform this office, 
and of them I would further speak. 

First: About two hundred and thirty-seven years 
ago, and about thirty-four years after the founding of 
this church here, that is, in the year 1670, the church of 
which I am now pastor was constituted of persons with- 
drawing from this church with one of its honored min- 
isters. The Rev. John Whiting, who served this church 
either as sole or colleague pastor from 1660 to 1670, 
was the first pastor of the Second Church here. From 
1670 to 1824, or for a period of one hundred and 
fifty-four years, these two were the only Congrega- 
tional churches within the bounds of what is now 
known as Hartford. For a period of about one hun- 
dred and twenty years they were the only Christian 
churches of any kind within those boundaries. These 
facts indicate the peculiar historic connection of these 
two Hartford churches. 

Whatever roots of bitterness there may have been, 
on either part, at the time of separation, soon decayed 
and disappeared, and there is no lack of evidence 
that the two societies maintained relations of cordiality 
and cooperation. Rev. Dr. Woodbridge of the First, and 
Rev. Mr. Buckingham of the Second Church were fast 



48 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

friends and trustees together of the new college in this 
colony. Wadsworth of the First and Whitman of the 
Second Church were classmates at Yale College, were 
settled here the same year, and were ever in most 
fraternal friendship. Doctor Strong and Doctor Flint, 
both remarkable men, labored here side by side, for 
twenty-five years. Together they assisted in organizing 
the Missionary Society of Connecticut. For years the 
one was its president and the other its secretary. To- 
gether they compiled in 1797 the once famous "Hart- 
ford Selection of Hymns"; edited the Connecticut 
Evangelical Magazine, widely circulated and eagerly 
read; engaged in forming the Connecticut Bible Society, 
in 1809, nor were ever two men so unlike, more heartily 
accordant in their common ministry. In 1727, when 
this Church was about to build a new meeting-house, 
and that of the Second Church was uncouth and in- 
commodious, overtures were made from the First Society 
for reunion. It was voted: 

"As it would be more for the honor, comfort, union, 
and ease of the town, and for the more easy and hon- 
orable support of the ministry amongst us, that one 
meeting-house may be built for the meeting of all the 
people of the two societies, . . . that his Honor the 
Governor, Hezekiah Wyllys, Captain John Sheldon, and 
Deacon Thomas Richards be a committee from this 
society to propose the premises to our friends of the 
new church, and endeavor that a meeting of said society 
may be gained to see if they are of our mind, and 
whether they will join with us to build a house for the 
public worship of God, and unite with our society." 

I have sometimes wished that this honorable and 
kindly overture had been accepted, and that the pro- 
posed reunion had been consummated, but considering 
the later growth of the town, the "new church" probably 
acted wisely (and kindly I hope) in declining the prop- 
osition. All through those years, many years, of har- 
monious cooperation, the First Church was ever the 
stronger and the higher of the two, while in respect of 
breadth neither was remarkable enough to enable us to 
institute any comparison between them, and neither 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 49 

would have entertained the thought of any such dimen- 
sion for itself. 

In 1824, ninety-seven members of this church re- 
ceived dismission to organize, with others, the North 
Church (now Park Church). In 1832, eighteen went 
out to join in forming the Fourth Church. In 1852, 
forty-seven were dismissed to unite with others in organ- 
izing the Pearl Street Church. These facts indicate 
the historic and the vital relations of other churches 
than the Second to the mother church, and why they re- 
joice with her in her glad anniversaries. 

Second: I seem to have been almost present at the 
dedication of this meeting-house! Not quite that, but 
very near it ! Among the narnes of the members of 
this church at the completion of The Brick Meeting- 
House, December, 1807, is that of Seth Terry, then a 
young man, afterwards a member of the North Church 
and later of the Second Church, in which he was a deacon 
from 1847 ui^til his death in 1865. For five years he 
was my old, my good and wise and honored friend. 
He was here at the dedication of this house, and it 
almost seems as if I was here also in or with him whose 
reminiscences of that occasion were so vividly related. 
And it seems so all the more, because I have personally 
and intimately known every pastor of this church who 
has ministered in this sanctuary since its dedication, 
save only Doctor Strong, who died in 18 16, nine years 
after that dedication. Doctor Hawes, settled here in 
1 8 17, a college classmate and lifelong friend of my 
grandfather, Dr. Enoch Pond, welcomed me here in 
i860 with paternal kindness, and befriended me in the 
same spirit so long as he lived. Both hallowed and 
mellowed by age he overshadowed us all in those days, 
as with the wings of a patriarchal loving-kindness, and 
his unquestionable primacy was by no means unpleasant. 
"Tell Father Brady," he said to the good priest's 
servant who inquired his name, "tell Father Brady 
that Pope Hawes called to see him ! " I recall one of 
his frequent visits at my house, his large, breezy en- 
trance, his great presence, and his almost boisterous 
greeting, as much to my delight as to the consternation 
4 



50 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

of the young mother there, — "and how are the little 
cubs today?" 

I recall the anniversary exercises of the Hartford 
Female Seminary held for several years in this house, 
and how Doctor Hawes's tall and homely figure towered 
above all that assemblage of beauty and grace in a kind 
of gentle majesty that carried benedictions in it, and 
was by no means incongruous with the scene beneath 
him. His own funeral service in this sanctuary wherein 
he had ministered for nearly fifty years, with Doctor 
Bacon's prayer and President Woolsey's sermon, was 
a memorable occasion. Then Doctor Calkins, associate 
pastor, of whom as still living I may not speak. Then 
Doctor Gould, unique, eloquent, moving swiftly between 
deep depressions and lofty exaltations; earnest, strenu- 
ous, importunate; cracking his mighty whiplash over 
all of us, like a Swiss diligence-driver, never hurting 
nor meaning to hurt our feelings very much, but only 
to remind us of duty. Then Doctor Richardson, gentle, 
genial, lovable, consumed with zeal, most devoted shep- 
herd, and only — as it sometimes seemed — just a little 
too good for this world's rude work, if such were 
possible ! Then Doctor Walker, than whom, since 
Thomas Hooker, this church has had no greater, worthier 
minister, of whom it would be impossible to speak but 
in the language of admiration and affection. Then 
Doctor Lamson, large every way, sane, sound and 
strong, the incarnation of honesty and simplicity, whose 
great heart ceased too soon to beat, whose sun too soon 
went down ! It has been an inestimable privilege, and 
all the greater as shared with my friend, Mr. Twichell, 
to know and associate with and love these good and 
noble ministers, whose "very memory is fair and bright." 

And it is our great privilege also to know and asso- 
ciate with and love — with you and the younger gen- 
eration — him upon whom their office has devolved and 
their mantle fallen, the present pastor of this church, 
not unworthy to stand in this line of succession. Now, 
to finish in less solemn strain, let me recall one notable 
service in this house, many years ago, which I fear has 
been forgotten. 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 5 1 

We began Christmas-Eve services in the Second 
Church, in i860, an innovation at which Doctor Hawes 
looked askance, at first. The next year I somehow 
succeeded in persuading him to come down to the serv- 
ice and take a sense of it and talk to the people. He 
came, and in the warmth and glow of it he thawed 
and melted, and talked as in a state of almost miracu- 
lous liquefaction too delightful to be either forgotten or 
described. And now for the sequel. On Monday 
morning, December 21st of the next year, at the min- 
isters' meeting in Doctor Hawes's study, all the 
arrangements were made for a union meeting of the 
Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist churchs of the 
city to be held on the next Thursday morning (Christ- 
mas Day) in the Center Church. The Hartford C our ant 
of December 24, 1862, and also of December 25th, 
published a notice of this meeting, which was^ fully 
attended, our Puritan patriarch himself conducting it 
with even more than his ordinary dignity, and Doctor 
Kennedy of the Methodist Church preaching the Christ- 
mas-Day sermon. I regret to say that this service 
though fully attended and though apparently successful, 
was not repeated. But there it is, a tremendous pre- 
cedent in the history of this meeting-house. Perhaps 
Doctor Hawes thought he had done enough in making 
it! The fact is that he had so much of the Christmas 
spirit in his nature that the Christmas appeal was irre- 
sistible to him. 

Doctor Walker naively remarks in his "History" 
that this meeting-house was regarded, on its completion, 
"as a rather splendid specimen of ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture." For forty-six years previous to that time, the 
present meeting-house at Wethersfield, erected in 1761, 
had borne the palm for the colony. The fame of that 
edifice had spread far and wide. It is interesting to 
note that Cooper, in his tale of "The Pioneers," the 
scene of which is at Otsego, N. Y., about the year 
1785, describes a character infatuated with architecture, 
who built a queer little shanty of a sanctuary in that 
locality, which he modestly christened "New St. Paul's," 
and of which, in his jealous pride, he used these words: 



52 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

"I think I may say, without bragging, that it is the 
handsomest and the most scientific country church in 
America. I know that the Connecticut settlers talk 
about their Wethersfield meeting-house, but I never be- 
lieve more than half they say, they are such unconscion- 
able braggers." Such was the celebrity of that sanc- 
tuary. But when this edifice stood forth in completeness, 
there is no doubt that for a while, at least, it took the 
shine from the one in Wethersfield. Nor is it unlikely 
that the good people down there felt the pang of this, 
and, loyal to their fane, indulged in sarcastic comments 
on their bragging Hartford neighbors. 

Far be it from me, at this late day, to waken the 
long and peaceful slumber of that ancient jealousy, or 
to get into hot water by stirring up trouble between 
the two parties, but if the Wethersfield meeting-house 
had been treated, in these later years, with more respect 
of its ancient and original features, it might still, I 
think, hopefully dispute the palm with even this build- 
ing. As things are the question is, if you please, an 
open one, of local option. 

Far be it from me to get into still hotter water by 
instituting any comparisons between these ancient edi- 
fices and the more modern specimens of ecclesiastical 
architecture that abound among us in more or less 
pleasing variety. But my own feeling is that there are 
no more convenient, suitable houses of worship in Con- 
necticut, and none more worthy of tender regard and 
judicious conservation, than many of those which were 
nobly planned and builded in the latter part of the 
eighteenth and in the early part of the nineteenth century, 
among which, not to mention others, are the two of 
which I have spoken. 

I congratulate this people upon the good care they 
have taken of this simple, substantial, and typical colonial 
edifice, and upon their wise and generous expenditures 
to preserve, enrich, and beautify it. May no ignorant 
modernity ever desecrate it with profane fingers. May 
it suffer no other stain than the golden stain of time. 
May it become more and more a house of prayer for 
all the nations. Out of a perennial spiritual spring 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 53 

within it may streams of living water continue to flow 
forth from it, to irrigate and make fruitful in all good 
things the entire surface of this community, and to 
make glad this city of our heritage, of our pride, and of 
our love. 

Presenting Bishop Brewster the Minister said: This 
Church has ever cherished a large Christian fellowship. 
In response to our invitation, one who worthily bears 
the name of an ancient pilgrim and fulfills richly an 
office in the Church of Christ in our State for the in- 
fluence of which we are all grateful, has come to bring 
us the greeting of the larger Christian fellowship. We 
welcome Bishop Brewster and we shall hear his message 
gladly. 

For the Fellowship of the Churches of Connecticut 

By the Rt. Rev. Chauncey B. Brewster D.D. 

My Friends and Brethren: In recognizing the cour- 
tesy of your pastor's invitation, let me say that perhaps 
I am not altogether out of place here, inasmuch as two 
of my maternal ancestors are named on the shaft, hard 
by, among the first settlers of Hartford. I congratu- 
late you upon the century you have enjoyed in this 
stately house, with its store of tender and sacred asso- 
ciations, and especially do 1 congratulate you upon your 
two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary. In this land 
any organization may have pride in a history of so 
many years. Your history has not only peculiar inter- 
est, by reason of its early vicissitudes over seas and 
through wilderness, but also import of large significance. 
Your first pastor and his company not only gave to the 
future State her name and the three vines of her coat- 
of-arms, but, moreover, impressed upon her character 
that sturdy independence wherewith the little colony for 
a century and a half built herself up in compact strength, 
quietly ignoring court and king. 

Yet more definite and more full of honor may be 



^4 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

your claim regarding beginnings here. The funda- 
mental Orders of 1639 are by ail authorities pronounced 
the first written constitution of a government known 
in history, and the earliest document to embody in 
government the democratic idea. To whom does the 
world owe this great state paper? The question was 
settled by a manuscript in cipher which slumbered for 
more than two centuries. At last was deciphered that 
short-hand report by Henry Wolcott of a sermon in 
Hartford, in 1638, wherein Thomas Hooker asserted 
"the privilege of election which belongs to the people" 
and the foundation of authority "in the free consent of 
the people," and exhorted to a masterful grasp of rights, 
in the sturdy words, "as God hath given us liberty, to 
take it." Thus while John Davenport was, in the word- 
ing of the inscription upon the Capitol, " preaching 
at New Haven," Thomas Hooker was planting here 
the seed-germ of a mighty Republic. This remarkable 
utterance, seven months before the making of the Con- 
stitution, is satisfactory evidence as to the source of 
that great document. If Roger Ludlow's was the hand 
that penned that paper and framed its legal phrase, 
the design and inspiration came from the far-seeing 
brain and virile soul of Thomas Hooker. Right here, 
beside the "great river," was born American democracy. 
The mother who bore it and cradled it was the fair 
colony named from the river. And she may well 
through all her history ascribe the paternity to her man, 
who led her forth to a new home and honor. 

It is interesting on your anniversary to note the 
connection here between political and ecclesiastical democ- 
racy. Each of the three settlements was in one aspect 
an independent church, in another an independent town. 
Thus it came about that the town became the political 
unit which was built up into the body politic. Look- 
ing at it historically, there can be no doubt that here in 
the three river towns began the institution of true demo- 
cracy, as Theodore Parker once defined democracy in 
language which Lincoln later made immortal : " direct 
self-government over all the people, by all the people, 
for all the people." 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 55 

It behooves us of a later day so to cherish this ideal, 
indigenous to Hartford, of a true democracy, that it 
shall not suffer loss amid the developments of our new 
time. Even while we remember all we owe to those 
little town republics and to the town-meeting, it is a 
pertinent question whether a commonwealth of a million 
souls has not in some respects outgrown a "Combination 
and Confederation" of towns equally associated and 
conjoined, and whether the essential principle of demo- 
cracy does not now demand that legislation should 
somehow proceed from the people of the commonwealth, 
and a majority of the people make the laws. The original 
instrument itself provided, for the representation of 
towns that should be added, "a reasonable proportion 
to the number of freemen that are in the said towns." 
The statesmen of that period of small beginnings had 
necessarily to think in terms of towns. Would not those 
same men today be quick to recognize the larger con- 
siderations incident to changed conditions? I have little 
doubt where Thomas Hooker would stand on the main 
question of essential democracy today. 

Again, as the thoughts of men are widened, our cen- 
tury is concerned not only with political relations but 
also, and perhaps more, with social relations. Un- 
doubtedly there is a socialism which threatens individual 
liberty and development. But there is also an individ- 
ualism, or rather egoism, which is a menace to society. 
A half-century ago Stuart Mill said: "Society has now 
fairly got the better of individuality." We, however, 
see that it is still possible for individuals to get the 
better of society. While in a new age emerge new 
problems, moral progress must involve a finer sense of 
duty in general and of the obligation of certain duties 
in particular. Inevitably new duties, or higher and 
more imperative aspects of old duties, come to light. 
Thus we are learning lessons regarding the obligation 
of the individual to society. We are learning that our 
ideal of democracy, if it is to survive peril, will require 
not only the freedom for which Christ set us free but also 
a genuine fraternity among all whom He made brothers. 

The weight of emphasis today upon social relations 



56 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

is the pressure of the finger of God, the insistence of 
the Spirit of the Hving God who guides men ever to 
more of truth. If Christianity means the reahzed brother- 
hood of men, then it behooves us Christian men in sanity 
and patience to study present problems on their economic 
and on their ethical side; lift voice and hand always 
for right between men and men ; recognize a moral re- 
sponsibility, over and above legal liability, for corporate 
action; and give, so far as in us lies, influence and en- 
deavor toward the end that combinations both of capital 
and of labor may become a beneficent enginery to 
advance the brotherhood of men, and that the tremen- 
dous social and commercial forces of our time may 
become truly ministrant to the Kingdom of God and 
His righteousness. Such endeavor is not in vain if it 
agree, as I believe it does, with God's purpose for us 
and for all. 

We see what potent influences for the future were 
stored in the virile manhood of Hooker and his com- 
pany. For the momentous tasks of this critical time 
there ought to be in Christian folk today an immeas- 
urable amount of latent spiritual power. Theirs it is 
to furnish incalculable supplies of moral force, of social 
energy, of dynamic enthusiasm finding issue in service 
and sacrifice. Theirs it is, in the power of the Spirit, 
still to lead in the cause of democratic liberty and of 
humanity, still undo heavy burdens, let the oppressed go 
free, and break every yoke. 

My Brethren, few local churches could commemo- 
rate a history like yours. In appreciation of that his- 
tory, and of the signal contribution from this venerable 
ecclesiastical society to the city, the State, the nation, 
the world, I bring you greeting and congratulation, so 
far as I may be held to represent them, from your 
fellow citizens and your fellow Christians in this city 
and throughout the State. In our day electricity and 
the march of events are bringing men together. It is 
an age of national and imperial unification and of in- 
ternational approaches. Men's minds are turned to 
great unities of thought and life. Parts of Christen- 
dom separated by distance and division have been thrilled 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 57 

by common currents of catholic thought. Many influ- 
ences conspire to draw Christians nearer together. Do 
we not all begin to weary of the era of separation? 

Ill were it if all this led to the mere mock charity 
of indifferentism. Convictions and conscientious prin- 
ciples are to be maintained, although it is not necessary 
to emulate those good people up in New Hampshire 
whose door-mat displayed the legend: "We are Bap- 
tists." Present differences, it is true, may not be ignored 
or minimized beyond truth. We may, however, get 
above differences through a large desire for some closer 
fellowship. It is possible, and it is well, beneath dif- 
ferences to find much fundamental agreement among all 
them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. 
Greater than any particular church is the whole multi- 
tude of that spiritual commonwealth. "Who can count 
the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of 
Israel?" 

Liberty, fraternity, — unity. Ought not Christians 
to illustrate fraternity in a unity which shall respect 
and conserve liberty? By no means would I presume 
upon the courtesy of my invitation. But, trusting the 
large generosity of my Congregational brethren, I ven- 
ture to tell you of my own ideal of unity. It is to be 
distinguished from uniformity. That was attempted 
in England two centuries and a half ago with disastrous 
results. Christian men are never all going to think 
just alike or worship just alike. While other than the 
uniformity which would suppress differences, it is also 
something more than the union which attempts to ignore 
differences. Such union is outward and mechanical. 
Unity is essential and vital. It is the unity in diversity 
of an organism where the several parts are developed 
each in a freedom which the more fully ministers to the 
rich life of the whole. It is a unity living and free, 
embracing distinctions, differences of administration, 
opinion, and mode of worship, but all made concordant 
because taken up into the large harmony of the whole 
in the key of a common faith and the common life of 
the one Spirit in one body. The constructive genius 
of John Wesley would seem to have conceived of the 



58 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

inclusion of great organizations within the organism of 
the one body. This to me seems by no means incon- 
ceivable. If I hope for some such organic unity, that 
shall not be dissevered from the life of the past and 
yet shall take hold of and enfold the life of the future, 
in my mind it is not the method of some one commun- 
ion seeking to absorb the rest. I dream rather of the 
seeking, by all, of some common basis of faith and 
order; the foregoing by all, to that end, of things of 
human ordering and preference, not insisting, I mean, 
upon such things for others; a general return, for that 
common standing-ground, to the old and well tried, the 
great, the simple things of God in Christ, that do not 
dissever but unite men, as at the first, in one Lord, one 
faith, one baptism. 

The restoration of visible unity has been called "an 
iridescent dream." If it be so, it is, I believe, one of 
those dreams foretold to be dreamed in the days of 
the Spirit, and it is iridescent with the rainbow hues 
of a glorious hope. In that hope, to me inspiring even 
though I may not live to see it come true, I cherish, 
with my ideals of liberty and fraternity, an ideal of 
Christian unity. No divine ideal is to be abandoned 
as hopeless. 

Some kind of unity surely we may claim to be an 
ideal that is divine and to be cherished with effort and 
prayer, as we rise to the height of that prayer which 
by Christ once was, and I believe still is, prayed: "that 
they may all be one, . . . that they may be one, even 
as we are one, . . . that they may be perfected into 
one." 

At the conclusion of the addresses the hymn, "Oh 
Where Are Kings and Empires Now" was sung, and 
the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell pronounced the benediction. 
A peal of one hundred strokes was rung upon the 
historic bell of the church by William B. Edwards, for 
over thirty years the faithful sexton of the old meeting- 
house. 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 59 



Commemoration 
Service 

Having offered the prayer of invocation the Minister 
presiding said: This church came into Connecticut 
with two sister churches, the First Church of Christ 
in Windsor, and the First Church of Christ in Weth- 
ersfield. The Scripture will be read by the Rev. George 
L. Clark, minister to the First Church of Christ in 
Wethersfield, and prayer will be offered by the Rev. 
Roscoe Nelson, minister to the First Church of Christ 
in Windsor. 

Mr. Clark read the twenty-fourth Psalm. 

The prayer of commemoration was offered by Mr. 
Nelson : 

Almighty and Eternal Father, who from everlasting 
to everlasting art God over all, unto Thee we offer 
our united worship and thanksgiving. In lowly con- 
fession of Thy sovereignty in the universe about us and 
within our consenting wills and hearts, in grateful de- 
pendence on Thy wisdom liberally given to Thy people 
for the guidance of life's mysterious journey in response 
to their seeking, in joyful praise for the disclosure of 
Thy redeeming love and grace in the Gospel of Thy 
Son Jesus Christ our Lord and for Thy Holy Church 
throughout the world builded upon the foundation of 
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being 
the chief corner-stone, and especially, O Lord, on this 
anniversary occasion, do we praise and bless Thee for 
Thy church in this New England, in this commonwealth, 
and in this city; for Thy electing Providence which 
brought our fathers hither and set them to the great 
task of building a free state. We thank Thee for Thy 



6o FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

great and continued favor to this ancient church, for 
Thy worthy servants — the founders thereof — for the 
succession of gifted men who have here divided the 
word of truth; and for those whose gifts, whether of 
tongues or song or of heahngs have here been conse- 
crated to Thy service in the various offices of the church; 
for the great company of humble souls whom no man 
can utter, whose piety has here been nurtured, and whose 
prayers and saintly lives have been the church's strength 
and the Saviour's convincing witnesses. We bless Thee 
for the men and women who have here found strength 
to walk and not faint, amid the sore losses and disap- 
pointments of life, who sitting in darkness have seen a 
great light, who like Mary and Martha have heard the 
Saviour saying unto them, " I am the resurrection and 
the life." We thank Thee for the light and blessing 
which have radiated from this place and have made for 
righteousness and peace in the city, in the State and 
nation; for the consecrated gifts which have sent Thy 
messengers to the ends of the earth. And, Most Gracious 
God, we humbly beseech Thee for the continuance of 
Thy favor to this church and people. May that light 
which is the light of men guide and keep both minis- 
ters and people, and let greater things than in the past 
still be wrought here in the salvation of men and the 
furtherance of Thy great kingdom. Pour out Thy 
blessing, we beseech Thee, upon the whole sisterhood of 
churches about us. May no spirit of hurtful pride or 
dissension get possession of the hearts of Thy people, 
and no surfeit or ulcer or indulgence of the flesh blind 
the mind and dull the heart to the supreme claims of the 
things of the spirit; but may Thy church, in the purity 
of its life and in the unity of its spirit, be the effective 
instrument of Thy grace in conveying to the hearts of 
all men the unsearchable riches of the Gospel of Christ, 
and in causing peace among men to abound and the 
principles of Thy kingdom to rule in all the complex 
affairs of the community and State. 

Hear us and answer us, O Lord, in this our prayer 
of thanksgiving and petition, which we offer in the all- 
prevailing name of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen. 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 6 1 

After the singing of the hymn " O God, beneath 
Thy Guiding Hand," the Minister said: The great seal 
of the State of Connecticut bears upon its face three 
vines. We are told that these three vines are symbols 
of the constituent towns of the State; and we know from 
history that they are a memorial of the day when the 
State consisted of but three towns; and these three were 
the ancient towns on the bank of the Connecticut, Wind- 
sor and Hartford and Wethersfield. This anniversary 
hour is further memorial of the day when these three 
towns were three Christian Churches, planted in this 
new land to bear fruit unto the kingdom of God. The 
ministers who now serve these ancient Churches are to- 
gether in this presence tonight. It is a peculiar pleasure 
to receive greetings in behalf of the State from him 
whom the people of Connecticut delight to honor. His 
Excellency the Governor, Rollin S. Woodruff. 

For the State 

The Hon. Rollin S. Woodruff 

I understand that this celebration of the First Church 
of Hartford is historical in its foundation, religious in 
its character, and thankful in its significance. My part 
in the program is to speak for the State of Connecticut, 
a very broad and a very democratic subject. In speak- 
ing for the State, however, I am confident that as 
governor, I am expressing the feeling of the whole 
commonwealth, when I say that this spot and this 
commemoration is sacred to us all, as there rises out of 
the past a vision, a picture of three hundred souls, 
marshaled by a minister of God, forming a republic 
in an ancient wilderness and planting the seed from 
which grew a government of the people, for the people 
and by the people of the United States. 

Was there ever more faith in God and more brains 
in man, than was demonstrated in the inspiration of 
Thomas Hooker and his noble band of pilgrims, when 



62 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

they founded the State of Connecticut on the spot where 
we stand? This is sacred ground indeed, and here in 
the city of Hartford, the gratitude of our country should 
erect a great memorial to the genius of American civil- 
ization. 

Here was human liberty decreed in a plan of demo- 
cracy, that has survived the perils of nearly three cen- 
turies, a democracy that will stand so long as our people 
are true to the spirit of the founders, so long as the 
law is made by men for the benefit of all mankind, so 
long as religious liberty and freedom of speech prevails, 
and education is the common right of childhood. 

This State and this government were established by 
the true advocates of Christianity, — a religion without 
bigotry, but with a broad tolerance in man's right to 
worship God in his own way. Such unselfishness was 
not known on earth since the Sermon on the Mount. It 
was the awakening the world had long waited for. It 
was the ideal government that grew out of the centuries 
of conflict and misunderstanding. Upon that unselfishness 
was this State established and this nation builded, and 
by that unselfishness alone shall this civilization succeed. 

Justice was at the bottom of it all; absolute liberty 
and a square deal was the intention of our ancestors, 
and this same spirit is triumphant today in the hearts 
of the people of our commonwealth. 

Our people believe in sound government, and although 
there may be times when we imperil our rights by neg- 
lecting our duty, we can be relied upon to correct the 
errors and to reestablish our dominant power for good, 
by overthrowing corruption whenever it is found. 

No people ever had a better history than the people 
of Connecticut, and no people can be more grateful for 
the blessings they are permitted to enjoy, — and none 
should guard their inheritance with greater zeal. 

Introducing Mayor Henney, the Minister said: The 
First Church of Christ in Hartford became in some 
true sense the town of Hartford: the town of Hart- 
ford has become the city of Hartford with a manifold 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 63 

life of diverse interests devoted to high ideals, — ful- 
filling that definition of the ancient philosopher who 
said a city is a place where men live the common life 
for a noble end. We have learned to know in Hart- 
ford that he who represents the city in its highest 
executive office may fitly speak for her people on any 
commemorative occasion. For this reason, and because 
it is meet that the city's voice be heard here, I have 
pleasure in introducing his Honor the Mayor, William 
F. Henney. 

For the City 

The Hon. William F. Henney, LL.D. 

We are gathered tonight in this commemoration 
service, to testify our appreciation of two events: The 
founding of this Church and the dedication of this 
historic edifice. And, although the two incidents are 
separated by the space of 175 years, yet each has its 
appropriate place and its own significance in the story 
of the First Church of Hartford. The dedication of this 
building 100 years ago was a local event, appealing, at 
most, to the parish and the city; the founding of this 
church 275 years ago and its migration hither were epoch- 
making events that concerned mankind. 

No one can contemplate the history of this Church, 
its organization at Newtown, its migration through 
trackless forests to the banks of the Connecticut, its 
settlement here in the wilderness far from the mother 
colony, without inquiring the motive that led its mem- 
bers to journey hither. Fortunately that motive is not 
far to seek. It is true that Thomas Hooker and his 
congregation wanted more room for their flocks and 
herds than Newtown afforded. They made known 
their needs and wishes to the Massachusetts General 
Court. That body gave them the privilege of acquir- 
ing a large tract of territory near at hand, more than 
sufficient for their present or any possible future needs. 
Thereupon they decided to remain at Newtown. But 



64 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

it soon became apparent that what the congregation 
wanted was room, not for their cattle but for their 
ideas. The spirit of unrest was upon them and the 
migration was determined upon and carried out. For 
about a year after the settlement here the government 
was in the hands of commissioners from Massachusetts. 

Then the little band of exiles began their work 
of constructive statesmanship. They cut loose from all 
antecedents and precedents and laid the foundations 
of a town and state government on lines that were 
novel in history, and instituted a new political order. 
In it they recognized neither king, nor parliament, nor 
commission, nor charter, but looked for the fountain 
head of all authority directly to the people themselves. 
Today, the principles they laid down are the common- 
places of political science. In 1639, they were things 
new and startling, overturning the universally accepted 
doctrine of divine right, throwing down the barriers 
that convention had established between man and man, 
and setting up, in the wilderness, a free government, 
adopted by a free people, for their own development 
and needs. Their sentiments were akin to those of 
Burns, when he said, " Here's to the last word of the 
last verse of the last chapter of Kings." What an in- 
calculable debt the world owes them for their courage 
and wisdom ! But, more than all others, this town and 
city and State are peculiarly their debtors. Let it never 
be forgotten that from the pulpit, not of this building, 
but of this church, and from the lips of its pastor, 
came the statement of that first principle of civil liberty 
which is the foundation of all our institutions and sys- 
tems of government in town and city, in State and nation. 

" The foundation of authority," said Hooker, in his 
memorable sermon of long ago, "is laid, firstly, in the 
free consent of the people." On this principle, with 
Windsor and Wethersfield, they erected a State. On 
this principle they developed a town government which 
has come down to our time. Nearly a century and a 
half later the city was incorporated, and today we are 
questioning very seriously whether we have improved 
upon the ancient government by selectmen. 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 6$ 

President Eliot maintains that the true remedy for 
municipal shortcomings is a return to the town system 
of the fathers, and he is far from alone in this position. 
And for my own part I fail to see how the experiment 
at Galveston and Des Moines of government by com- 
mission is any improvement on the New England idea. 
The American citizen is suffering from a plethora of 
laws. No active man can go far afield in our own 
State of Connecticut today, without danger of bumping 
up against some State statute, or, failing that, without 
bruising himself against some city ordinance or town 
by-law, and fortunate he is, if he return from his ex- 
cursion without being struck by an automobile or an 
act of Congress. I wonder if the average citizen has 
ever thought of this matter seriously. Today, our Con- 
gress begins its session, and the result will be a vast 
and unwieldy volume. Soon, too, the legislatures of 
forty-six states will begin their annual or biennial in- 
dustries, pouring from their vast hoppers their pro- 
duct upon the land, and the long-suffering citizen, for 
whom there is neither ark of safety nor bow of promise, 
will soon find himself overwhelmed with a new deluge 
of laws. And not to be outdone in the manufacture 
of enactments, the common councils of cities and the 
town meetings of towns, throughout our vast territory, 
may be relied upon to furnish their full quota of ordi- 
nances and by-laws. This tendency is due, in some 
measure, to a love for paternalism in government, but 
it is due more, I think, to a too eager yearning for per- 
fection. We are over-anxious to restrain every evil and 
promote every good. We would do well to fix our at- 
tention upon the temporary character of present condi- 
tions and laws, and remember the poet's warning: 

" Our little systems have their day, 

They have their day, and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And thou, O God, art more than they." 

The remedy will be found at the root of things, in 
simpler living, simpler manners, and simpler laws. The 
laws of the forefathers were few, but they were mighty 
5 



66 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

because of the magistrate behind them. We should in- 
sist on fewer laws and on the more regular and intel- 
ligent enforcement of those we have. I rejoice that in 
things municipal we are beginning to dwell on the value 
of publicity and simplicity, and to consider the direct 
and effective town system of the fathers as a remedy 
for municipal ills. Before long, I think, in some New 
England city, the experiment will be tried. And so it 
is, that in this hour sacred to memory, the fathers 
of this church and city appeal to us not only by what 
they were, but by what they did. Tablet and head- 
stone and memorial shaft, in the churchyard behind us, 
set forth their names and lineage in the long ago. But 
history has recorded in imperishable characters their 
heroic sacrifice and service, their unflinching fidelity to 
duty, their wisdom and courage in adversity, their 
knowledge of the work they were engaged in, their 
prophetic vision of all that was to be. For many a 
year rank weeds and tangled grass, and every circum- 
stance of neglect and squalor, desecrated their last rest- 
ing place, till the loyal hearts and loving hands of 
Ruth Wyllys chapter, under the devoted and enthusi- 
astic leadership of Mrs. Holcombe, rescued it from its 
degradation and desolation. This work was wrought 
at an expenditure of more than $100,000, but the 
spirit that prompted that labor of love, and carried it 
to a successful completion, is priceless. And whenever 
the names and achievements of the fathers shall be men- 
tioned, this work of these noble women shall also be 
told, in memorial of them. 

This sacred hour, with all its thronging memories, 
brings its own meed of admonition and inspiration. It 
warns us against doubt and fear and all manner of pes- 
simism, it inspires us to courage and hope and faith. 
*' Few, indeed, are the good," said the classic reformer 
in his despair. " Few, indeed, are the good, their num- 
ber is hardly so many as the hundred gates of Thebes 
or the mouths of the Nile far spreading." And it may 
well be that Juvenal, lawyer and satirist though he was, 
whose youth was spent under Nero and who wrought 
and wrote through the reign of Domitian, has set, by 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 67 

these verses, in the panorama of human story a faith- 
ful picture of his times. 

But we are hving in a better and nobler age — an 
age whose conscience is quickened to higher standards 
of private living and public service, and whose chal- 
lenge to every proposition of public policy or private 
enterprise is not "is it expedient?" but "is it right?" 
These verses of Juvenal may be justified as the in- 
dignant expression of an unpalatable truth; but in us 
such thought were treason — treason to the history of 
this church and city with its legion of the great and 
good in public and private service, to the disinterested 
labors of your self-sacrificing pastors, from Hooker to 
Potter, to the life work of those whose virtues we com- 
memorate tonight, to all they toiled for and to all they 
won. Rather let their memory arouse us to a keener 
appreciation of the privileges we enjoy, to a realizing 
sense of the responsibilities of citizenship, remembering 
by what labors and sacrifices that citizenship was secured 
to us and at what a fearful cost. We shall do well, 
you and I, to think often on these things, setting, on the 
one hand, the present, with our own petty sacrifices for 
the common good, and over against it, on the other, sub- 
lime and abounding consecrations of the past. No right- 
thinking man, who remembers these things, will ever be 
recreant to the least of his duties as a citizen, or neg- 
lect such opportunities as offer for public service. And 
so I cannot help thinking we are met tonight, in this 
memorial service, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, "not 
to consecrate but to be consecrated;" to renew our 
pledge of loyalty to church and city, to all that makes 
for the uplifting of the community and the welfare of 
our fellows. Side by side, as loyal companions and 
friends, church and city have journeyed onward together 
through the years, mutually helpful, mutually inspiring, 
each in its own sphere supplementing the other, bound 
together by the ties of a common origin, by the sym- 
pathies of long association, and by a mission of service 
to all. The city congratulates the church on this happy 
anniversary occasion, in all good comradeship and friend- 
liness. May the coming years, with their inevitable 



68 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

burdens, open wide before it new avenues of opportunity 
and achievement, and above all, and comprehending 
all, may it be blessed with a future worthy of its past; 
and may church and city, through all the changes and 
vicissitudes before us partake, in overflowing measure, of 
that righteousness which exalteth, not a church only, but 
a city, a state, and a nation. 

After the singing of the "Te Deum" by the choir, 
the Minister said: We are not unmindful of the men 
of our sister colony in New Haven. There have been 
rivalries in time past between New Haven and Hart- 
ford. Whatever differences there were in the early Ideals, 
ideas, and policies of these colonies, they have long ceased 
to be, and our only rivalry now is that of friends striv- 
ing toward the highest ideals for the city and the State. 
It is fitting that the ancient Churches of New Haven 
should be represented with us in this hour, and therefore it 
is with pleasure that I introduce, to turn our thoughts 
from the past to the problems of the present and the 
tasks of the future, the Rev. Artemas J. Haynes, D.D., 
Minister to the United Church on the Green in New 
Haven. 

The Church and the City 

By the Rev. Artemas J. Haynes, M.A. 

If the occasion were one that called for a sermon 
rather than an address, and I confess that I am not 
quite clear on the distinction, the text that I should 
choose as most appropriate to my subject is one written 
in the first epistle to the Corinthians, "The Church of 
God Which Is at Corinth." These words bring to- 
gether the two institutions of which I am to speak this 
evening — the church and the city. 

By the church I do not mean that Invisible company 
of those who have known the Lord; I mean the church 
as an organization. Perhaps It would be better to say, 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 69 

for purposes of common speech, the churches. By the 
city I do not mean the municipal corporation. I am not 
thinking of it in the legal or political sense, but as a 
social fact, an aggregation of so many thousand people 
packed together in a comparatively small area. 

According to these definitions it will be seen that 
church and city are vitally, rather than formally, related 
to each other. The church lives in and is a part of 
the city. The people who constitute the first, constitute, 
likewise, the second. The word churchman cannot in 
any sense get itself separated from the word citizen. 
We are dealing here with something that is alive, we 
are dealing with a social organism. If the city were a 
thing of wood and brick and stone, or even if it were 
a legal or political unity alone, then we might take the 
church apart by itself and discuss its problems in a 
purely esoteric way. But a city is something more : it 
is a living, breathing reality, an aggregation of men and 
women whose labors and hopes and destinies flow to- 
gether into one mighty current that we call the life of 
the people. 

This seems simple enough when simply stated, and 
yet it is of fundamental importance. It means that 
there can be no solution of the problem of the modern 
church apart from the larger solution of the problem 
of the modern city. "The church of God which is at 
Corinth" — look straight at that utterance for a moment. 
Here is something new in the history of the world, a 
new social fact — "the church of God." To be sure, 
but this fact is set solidly into the background of another 
fact, a larger fact, the fact of Corinth. Corinth does 
not exist for the church, — the church exists for Corinth. 
Corinth was there before the church came, and Corinth, 
or some other city, will be there after the church has 
disappeared; for is not this the meaning of that vision 
of the city that was without a temple? 

Here then is the way in which I would divide and 
balance my subject. The church is for the city, not the 
city for the church. On such an anniversary occasion 
as the present it is worth while to remind ourselves of 
this incontrovertible fact. It Is well for every church 



70 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

to understand that it can have no problem apart from 
that larger problem of the redemption of the city. God 
has not set the church here to levy tribute upon the city, 
and to consider how it may support its own institutional 
life apart from the pressing needs of the city. The 
moment a church begins to ask, "How can we use the 
city, how may we levy tribute upon the people, how 
shall we persuade the community to our support?" that 
moment the long process of disintegration will begin; 
and it will never stop until not one stone of the edifice 
is left upon another. God has set himself a stupendous 
task, and that is to change the city that Cain built into 
a city of God. To save the city is to save the nation, — 
more, it is to save the world. "One Christian city," 
said Henry Drummond, "one city in any part of the 
earth whose citizens from the greatest to the humblest 
lived in the spirit of Christ, whose religion had over- 
flowed the churches and passed into the streets, inundat- 
ing every house and workshop, and permeating the 
whole social and commercial life, — one such Christian 
city would seal the redemption of the world." Can 
any man doubt the truth of this? 

And can any Christian doubt that this is what God 
is trying to do, redeem the city; that He is infinitely 
more interested in such a redemption than He is inter- 
ested in the transient success of this church, or that, or 
all the churches? If the church would be as large 
as God's thought of it then let it ask: "How shall we 
cooperate with Him in this great work of building a 
city wherein dwelleth righteousness, how shall we min- 
ister to the needs of the people, how may we give to, 
rather than exact from, the community? In this great 
work of changing our city until it shall be a city of 
God, what distinct service may we render?" Such in- 
quiries will bring the church straight up to the question 
that transcends, in ecclesiastical importance, all others, 
What is the function of the modern church in the modern 
city? 

In our answer to this question we have gone so far 
as to maintain that the city, in any large view of the 
subject, must be placed above the church. The church 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 7 1 

is the means to the end of the city's redemption. The 
work of the church is to help — for the church is not 
God's only agency — to help in changing the city of 
Cain into a city of God. That is its work. But how 
shall it set about this work? What is the special serv- 
ice — for it is an age of specializing — that the church 
can render? In other words, what is the function of 
the church? What is the particular purpose for which 
God has planted it in Corinth? To save Corinth, to 
be sure; to save Corinth rather than itself. Yes, but 
how, how shall it save Corinth? What is the first 
step, and the second, and the third? What is the place 
of the church in our modern city life? What is its 
function? What is it here for? 

I hope you will be patient with me if I say that it 
is at just this point that our Protestant Christianity is 
all adrift. To speak of those of our own order, hardly 
two Congregational churches would give the same 
answer to these questions. We are not at all agreed 
as to our message, or our work, or our place in the 
community. Rarely will you find a Protestant church 
that has, as the sailors say of a ship, found itself; in 
which there is a well-matured consciousness as to why 
and for what purpose it exists. The ordinary church, 
under one minister, may follow a well-defined policy; 
under another leader it may trim its sails to catch any 
breeze. On the whole I think our churches manage to 
keep upon the firing line; but the marksmanship is too 
often like that of Mr. Winkle, who aimed at nothing 
in particular and shut both eyes when he pulled the 
trigger. 

Is it too much to say that this condition of things 
is all wrong? Why should not a church take itself 
sternly in hand until it shall have settled certain ques- 
tions pertaining to its proper function? Why should 
it permit itself to drift? Why should it emphasize 
Christian education today and tomorrow allow itself to 
be swung into some foaming current of evangelism? 
Why should it stake its life upon a hybrid liturgy one 
year, and risk everything the next on an institutional 
endeavor? Is it so wholly impossible to decide as to 



72 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

the best thing, the right thing, the God-given thing? 
Was the hfe of the great Master of so uncertain char- 
acter. His teaching so blind. His commandments of 
such puzzhng import that His church finds it impossible 
to settle solidly upon some well-defined policy? Must 
that church be at the mercy of every vagrant scheme 
that gets itself afloat? Speaking for myself alone I 
would be ashamed to serve a church that would fall in 
blindly with anything I proposed. A church ought 
to make up its mind what the great work of God is in 
the world. As to this it would seem that there could 
be no doubt. His work is to save the world. His 
work is to lift up the nation. His work is to redeem 
the city. Having made up its mind as to the work 
every church ought to decide the question as to what 
its own place must be in the working out of that divine 
plan of redemption; it ought sooner or later to get 
itself born into a full and clear consciousness of its 
proper_ function. That means a policy, it means pur- 
pose, it means definiteness. And the church having 
found Itself should not allow any man, or any group 
of men, to swing it a single point away from its charted 
course. Lost upon the ocean, the first thing the sailor 
does is to get his reckoning, if not by the sun then by 
the eternal stars; and the first thing that needs to be 
done by the church of Christ today is to get its reckon- 
ing, mark its course upon the chart, determine whither 
it is sailing, to what port and for what purpose. Unless 
the church in the city is to complete the process of dis- 
integration that is now going on it must find itself, it 
must determine its proper function, it must settle on a 
policy. It must answer the question, theoretically to 
itself, practically to the world: What is that something 
for which God has raised us up? As a new life began 
for the apostle Paul when he lifted his face from the 
ground and asked, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to 
do?" so a new life will begin for any church that 
earnestly lifts up its prayer in the question, " Lord, what 
wilt Thou have this church to do?" 

Now the fact that this question is asked is evidence 
that we believe the answer must come from the Lord; 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 73 

I will go farther and say, the answer has come from 
the Lord. It is written in the constitution of man 
himself, it is written in the history of the church, it 
is written in the Scripture that I quoted; for notice, 
it does not say the church which is at Corinth, but 
"the church of God which is at Corinth." Here in 
one word is indicated the function of the church. Its 
supreme work is the interpretation of God to men; 
and to this end the first step that the church must 
take is to provide an adequate public worship for the 
city. This is the first step, and it is the step of first 
importance. So sure am I of my ground just here 
that I am willing almost to be dogmatic. The service 
of public worship is the supreme service that any church 
can render the city. Other institutions may do almost, 
if not quite, everything else. To the church alone is 
given the function of interpreting God to men in pub- 
He worship. And may I ask, if the church does not 
magnify this work that seems to have been by some law 
of deep necessity assigned to it, what institution on 
earth will do it? We shall never have a redeemed 
city until we have a redeemed people; and we shall 
never have a redeemed people until we bring to bear 
upon them those truths and principles and impulses 
towards divine living that have their source in God. 

How shall this work be done? What institution is 
going to do it? If the church turns away from this 
high call that comes echoing forth from heaven itself, — 
if she turns away to dissipate her energies upon those 
ministries of public service that can be done, and better 
done, by other agencies, then she may expect that the 
time will come when her grip will weaken and her 
voice will lose its note of authority. It is only in the 
field of high spiritual realization that we can say of 
the church as the roman poet said of Jupiter, Non 
viget qiiinquam simile aut secundam. There is nothing 
equal, there is nothing second to it. 

My hearers, I am speaking to a church that has 
always put this matter of public worship first. I am 
speaking to a church that has a history more illustrious, 
in some respects, than that of any other church of our 



74 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

order. It is a church that has stood staunchly for the 
high ideals of citizenship, but believed always that 
those ideals could be realized only through the refining 
influences of religion. Accordingly this church has cul- 
tivated assiduously the church-going habit. It has not 
yielded yet to the modern temptation of trying to do 
everything. It still believes in religion as a reality that 
issues forth from God. I am speaking to you at a time 
when the air is full of all sorts of strange allurements 
to tempt you out of that straight, even if narrow, path 
in which your fathers walked. What shall I say to 
you, you who have asked me to speak some word that 
shall interpret the need of the future? 

Is there anything for me to say except this, " Stand 
in your own place, hold fast to your God-appointed 
work, and possess your souls in patience." On every 
side churches are swinging away into all sorts of 
schemes and institutional vagaries. Let them go; they 
will come back again, for they will find in time that 
there is only one work in this world that the church of 
Christ can do. Men ask of her only one thing. She 
must make God and the immortal life seem real, she 
must proclaim those truths that have to do with the 
upper realms of man's nature, she must interpret to 
him his dreams, fire him with new hopes, and throw 
about his imagination the poetry and romance of reli- 
gion. She must feed his starved-out soul with the bread 
of life. She must give him what he asks, the thing 
that no other institution on earth can give him; and 
if she^ refuses this, if, through misplaced emphasis, her 
worship is so poor and meager that God is not mediated 
to men's souls — God's truth, God's love, God's right- 
eousness, God's spirit itself — if this is not done, then 
men will continue in the future to do what they have 
been doing in the past, leave the churches of our order 
for some other, or turn their backs in disappointment 
or contempt or bitterness upon the institution of the 
church as a whole. 

It may be thought, perhaps, that this is rather a 
narrow stream of influence for the church. It is nar- 
row, but it is also deep and flows far out into that 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 75 

boundless ocean of power which Is the life of God. A 
small thing, it may seem, to build up a public worship 
that shall draw and hold the people by its resistless 
spell, — a small thing that men and women should 
learn to pray together, should here open their minds 
to the word of divine truth, bow their heads In one 
comnion Impulse of penitence, or lift their faces to the 
glowing visions of hope. A small thing, all this, in 
comparison to those ambitious efforts by which some 
churches would bring in the kingdom of God and redeem 
the city at a stroke. Is it worth while for a church 
seriously to be concerning Itself over the trivialities of 
hymn and prayer and preached word, when there are 
great ^ industrial and economic reforms pressing upon 
us with their insistent appeal? Is it worth while 
studying the gospel of St. John when there Is such 
gross Ignorance as to the requirements and provisions 
of the city charter? Is It worth while that the Chris- 
tian church should continue to hold Its old-fashioned 
idea of the Importance of public worship, pouring out 
Its money and expending its energy In order to make 
this worship dignified and beautiful — illuminating to 
the mind and satisfying to the heart? Seriously, I 
think it is, for every high service in this world Is swept 
along ^ to Its culmination by some resistless tide of In- 
spiration. To change the figure, the Christian service 
is built upon, and must forever rest upon, the Christian 
worship. And the tragedy of this age of church effort 
lies just here, in trying to do the work of God without 
the help of God. The place to build the church Is 
on the mount of transfiguration; the place to render 
service is down in the valley, and woe to men if they 
try to do the work of the valley without first climbing 
up to the mount. In other words, the church of God 
has nothing to do with industrial, economic, and social 
reform, — It has everything to do with preparing men 
for those reforms by Instilling into their minds right 
principles, firing their hearts with holy enthusiasm, and 
making them strong In spirit through a living communion 
with God In public worship. 

Do you say that this is strange teaching to hear 



76 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

from the lips of a young man? Is it not generally 
understood that the young men in the ministry are more 
in sympathy with the social than with the individual 
aspect of religion? I hope not. The young men are 
interested, to be sure, in the application to society of 
the social teachings of Jesus, but they have not yet 
arrived at the conviction that religion is more a matter 
of work in the valley than of worship on the mount. 
The religion of the individual soul is the foundation of 
everything, — not everything, but the foundation of 
everything. I cannot but believe that the great major- 
ity of young men in our ministry still believe that the 
chief function of the church is worship, — call it prayer, 
praise, aspiration of soul, whatever you will. This is 
the first thing, and this is the most important thing, 
and this is the thing above all others that God has com- 
missioned the church to attend to. The church that 
neglects this, the church that ceases its eternal effort 
to realize God, the church that seeks to make up for 
its loss of spiritual power by a show of missionary zeal 
or a hurried endeavor to institutionalize itself, has 
stamped upon it, though it may know it not, the seal 
of doom. The chief business of the church and I 
dare say it in the face of all the practical demands 
of the age, — the chief business of the church is to 
worship God; and in worshiping Him to build up such 
a service as shall throw its spell over men whose hearts 
may be stained with sin, whose minds may be per- 
verted by wrong views of life, and whose wills are so 
weak that without the aids of public worship they 
would fall away from spiritual realities, and lose out 
of their souls that awful yet saving sense of living and 
moving and having their being in God. 

I do not mean, of course, that a man cannot be 
religious without public worship. But I do mean that 
it is not likely that the average man will get very far 
into religious reality unless he unites with other men in 
a common aspiration. And even the exceptional man 
needs, as he needs nothing else, this public expression 
in public worship of his inner feelings. There are 
depths of emotion which can only be reached by people 



ANNIVERSARY EXERCISES. 77 

as they act together. There Is something in public 
worship, a last reach of prayer, a fullness of soul, a 
sense of our common humanity and our utter depend- 
ence upon God, that no earnestness of private devotion 
can ever yield to a man. The day may come, indeed, 
when there shall be a city without a temple, but it will 
be because every man's heart is a temple, every home 
is a temple, every workshop is a temple, and every 
place where men meet together a place for worship. 
Until that day shall dawn the city will need, more than 
it needs anything else, the meeting-house where the 
church of God assembles, and with the church all those 
who find it in their hearts to worship, 

I would not have you think, however, that I am 
satisfied to leave the matter here. If the first word 
that the church must write upon its banner is worship, 
the second word is service. The ideal church is the 
church that succeeds in establishing a just balance be- 
tween worship of God and service to humanity. If 
service has no power without worship, worship has no 
meaning without service. 

And that service, I am convinced, must be a close, 
personal, intimate service In order to be efl^cient. Men 
are talking a great deal today about the church and 
social service. But how, may I ask, can the church 
serve the city effectively except as the Individual mem- 
bers perform Individual ministries of Christlike helpful- 
ness? Certain ways there are, to be sure. In which the 
church can act, and should act. In Its organized capacity. 
First of all the church, as a church, may cultivate the 
will to render any large service that opportunity may 
throw In its way. Mr, Kidd somewhere speaks of a 
"cosmic process" going on through the ages, which. In 
his own words, is "the emancipation and the raising 
of the lower classes of the people." The church, if it 
Is to live, must come more and more into sympathy 
with this process. It must throw itself In every way 
possible into the present day uprising against social 
miseries. If ever the world has known a revival of 
religion we are In the midst of one now. It Is a revival 
that has got out of our prayer-meetings and is blazing 



78 FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

up and down through our streets. Yesterday its con- 
verts were the visionaries, the dreamers, the fanatics; 
today the revival is past that stage; and we find our 
most thoughtful men, our conservatives, men of prop- 
erty and standing. Inquiring anxiously — What must 
we do as a people to be saved? As I have said, it may 
not be possible for the church, in Its organized capacity, 
to do much; It may not be possible for it to do any- 
thing. But it may, at least, cultivate the will to do. 
And it is probable that once the church possesses the 
will, a way will be found. The great struggling masses 
ought to understand that our ministers and our churches 
are in sympathy with them. We have our church 
buildings that may well be thrown open to various 
municipal purposes, thus emphasizing the Idea of a muni- 
cipal church. By a larger and more aggressive policy 
of local benevolences a church may strengthen its serv- 
ice to the city. I have said, and shall hold to the posi- 
tion, that the thing of first Importance is the public 
worship of a church; I now say, and see no Inconsistency 
in saying, that it Is a shameful thing for any church to 
expend more money on Its music than on some kind of 
city missionary work. 

Thus I might go on enumerating possible ways In 
which the church may act In an organized capacity 
without plunging Into modern institutionalism, and sac- 
rificing Its Ideal of personal and family religion express- 
ing Itself In an exalted and beautiful public worship. 
After all has been done, however, it remains true that 
the supreme gift of a church to its city Is the redeemed 
individual. What the city most needs from the church 
is not some large scheme for social betterment, but men 
and women whom the church has so charged with the 
love of Christ that they are willing to do quietly and 
out of sight the hand-to-hand work that tends to weld 
people into a common brotherhood. One man can give 
time better than money; another man money better 
than time, — it Is for every man to choose; but service 
of some sort he must render If he is to meet the Chris- 
tian demand. And service of some sort he will render 
if the church has ministered to him of the spirit of 



Anniversary exercises. 79 

Christ. What the city needs from the church, I can- 
not help believing, is not some organized endeavor to 
reform its politics or its industry or its social life; what 
it needs from the church is Christ-like men and women. 
These reforms are of vast importance. Our institu- 
tional work must be done. The loaves and fishes of 
material prosperity are not to be neglected. But all 
this work is outside the proper function of the church. 
The church is to preach the truth; the church is to lay 
down the principles, the church is to kindle the fire; 
and men who have caught the inspiration are to go out 
to a nobler citizenship. As an organization the work 
of the^ church is not to reform society, but to redeem 
humanity. It is for the church to make righteous God- 
fearing men; and it is for these men, acting not as 
churchmen but as citizens, to make a righteous, God- 
fearing city. 

And this, friends, is my last word to you. "The 
church of God which is at Corinth." The church of 
God which is at Hartford! What a wide sweep of 
time! And yet the essential needs of humanity are the 
same. We have gone a long way since then; we have 
yet a long way to go. That city of God, the New 
Jerusalem that the seer saw in vision, has not yet come 
down from heaven to earth. But every spire that 
points upward is the sure pledge of its coming. What 
service, as a church, can you render? I have tried to 
tell you this evening; I have tried to put into words 
the two great essentials that I believe this church must 
continue to stand for, — worship and service. Train 
yourself, by all the needs of your nature, by all your 
hopes of eternal life, by all within you that is strong, 
and by all that is weak, — train yourself, when those 
doors open once a week, to come hither for worship; 
and then as the church gives to you of its fellowship, 
and as God gives to you of His spirit, learn the great 
lesson of lessons that you must give of that which you 
receive or it will be taken from you. Learn that wor- 
ship without service is an insult to God and a mockery 
in the eyes of men. Oh what a church, with your his- 
tory and your opportunity, you ought to have in this 



So FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 

house! If it be true that one Christian city would 
seal the redemption of the world, Is It too much to say 
that one Christian church, Christian In its worship and 
Christian In Its service, would seal the redemption of 
the city? Perhaps It Is too much to expect that you 
may have such a church here ; but surely It is not too 
much to hope for, It is not too much to work for, It is 
not too much to pray for. 

After the singing of "America" the benediction was 
pronounced by the Minister and the exercises were at 
an end. 



FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST OF HARTFORD. 



8l 



THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST 

IN HARTFORD 



The Meeting-Houses 
The House In Newtown, Mass., 
The First House in Hartford, 
The Second House in Hartford, 
The Third House in Hartford, 
The Fourth House in Hartford, 



The Ministers 
Thomas Hooker, 
Samuel Stone, . 
John Whiting, 
Joseph Haynes, 
Isaac Foster, . 
Timothy Woodbridge, 
Daniel Wadsworth, 
Edward Dorr, 
Nathan Strong, 
Joel Hawes, . 
Wolcott Calkins, 
George H. Gould, 
Elias H. Richardson, 
George Leon Walker, 
Charles Marion Lamson, 
Rockwell Harmon Potter, 



1632-1636 
1635-1641 
1641-1739 
1739-1807 
1807- 



1633-1647 
1633-1663 
1660-1670 
1664-1679 
1680-1682 
1685-1732 
1732-1747 
1748-1772 
1774-1816 
1818-1867 
1862-1864 
1864-1870 
1872-1879 
1879-1900 
1894-1899 
1900- 



LEJL '03 



COMMEMORATIVE EXERCISES 

OF THE — — 

First Church of Christ 

IN HARTFORD 

DECEMBER i - 3. 1907 



